^f^^ 




I I UP 1 [\IL l°JLULVr\DIA 

P. L. 123 OPO 9—1465 



THE PASS 






THE PASS 



BY 
STEWART EDWARD WHITE 

Author of "The Blazed Trail," "The Forest," 
"The Mountains," etc., etc. 



FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR BY FERN AND LUNG REN 

AND MANY OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS 

FRQM PHOTOGRAPHS 




Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1912 



^SBSSSSSSf^ 



\J(c5 



Copyright, 1906, by 

THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY 

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, Eng. 



All rights reserved 



TBAK8FBB 



400150 






COLUMBIA PBOPBRTY 

try i.'\> f \^A P| 

'dnten 



^ U^Mi BtaUOUBRART 



CHAPTEB 
I 


The Big Meadow Trail • 


PAQB 

.i CI 1 


II 


The Forest Ranger . ^ 


i M 13 


TIT 


Roaring River 


. ..: 33 


IV 


Deadman's Canon . 


. 45 


V 


Cloudy Canon 


. ., 63 


VI 


Bloody Pass . 


. :., 73 


VII 


We Fall Back .. 


. . 91 


VIII 


The Permanent Cam;p , 


. 107 


IX 


The Side Hill Camp 


. 147 


X 


The Ledge 


. . 173 




Appendix 


. 195 




Field Notes . 


. 197 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

A misstep would have tragic consequences 

Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

The mountain meadows are like small lakes 

with grass in lieu of water . .10 

A short forage — a sharp report and dinner 28 

Deadman's Canon . . . . .48 

Wes clears the trail 60 

We had just time to dig our heels in and 

brace for the shock when over she went 76 

Bullet took his time, smelled out each step 

and passed without an accident . 84 

The way was very rough . . . . 100 

Among big rugged cliff debris . . .114 

The six-shooter terminated the argument 

with the rattlesnake . ,. . . 132 
vii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



A treacherous snowfield . . . .150 

Looking down Elizabeth Pass — a jumble of 

mountain peaks 162 

The lake that Wes discovered . . .180 

The thin black line across the face of the 

cliff is the ledge by which we descended 192 

Map ........ 199 



vm 



THE BIG MEADOW TRAIL 






THE BIG MEADOW TRAIL 

We had already been out about two 
months, Billy and Wes and I, and were 
getting short of grub. Wes took Din- 
key and Jenny on a wide detour down 
to the six-thousand foot mark, where a 
little mill town afforded a chance of re- 
plenishing supplies. Billy and I, in 
charge of Buckshot and Old Slob and 
Calamity Jane, the diminutive mule, con- 
tinued on the trail, under agreement to 
wait for Wes at Big Meadows. 

Billy rode ahead on her brown pony, 
watching the landscape go by, peacefully ^i 

leading the way. The three pack-horses 
followed more or less conscientiously. 
Bullet and I brought up the rear, I snap- 




THE PASS 

ping my slingshot and Bullet his teeth to 
keep Calamity Jane in the way she should 
go. Tuxana, the bull dog, and Pepper, 
the Airedale, were in and out of the brush 
discovering the most rapturous smells. 
That is the way one travels in the moun- 
tains. 

We were about seventy-five hundred 
feet up and in the country typical of that 
elevation. Much of the trail was in the 
pine woods, but occasionally we skirted 
broad, open mountain sides. There grew 
manzanita and snow-bush, with bald rocks 
outcropping. When we came to such a 
hill we shook off the delicious state where- 
in a certain part of us — the part that had 
to do with horses and trail and lay of the 
country and pack-ropes — was wide awake 
and efficient, but in which all the rest of 
us was luxuriantly and indolently allow- 
ing the foreordained to take place; and 
began to look for deer. We did not want 
4 






THE BIG MEADOW TRAIL 

to shoot them, but it was fun to see them. 
Then regretfully Tuxana and Pepper 
obeyed our orders and came to heel. But 
in a few moments again we entered the 
pines and the cedars and the huge Doug- 
las spruces, where the mountain brooks 
leaped from one pool to another, and cer- 
tain wild flowers lightened the shadows. 

After a time we descended a deep 
canon to a stream of considerable size. 
Obstructing it were boulders rounded by 
floods, white as the snow from which the 
waters about them came. At the ford it 
glittered with fool's gold, barbaric and 
splendid. The horses splashed through 
indifl*erently, but the dogs lamented on 
the further side of resolution. Finally 
they decided. Tuxana, characteristically, 
leaped from one stone to another, bal- 
anced with care, lost and caught her equi- 
librium a half dozen times. About the 
middle her hind feet slipped. At once 
5 



THE PASS 

the current caught them. She clung des- 
perately, her countenance agonized, but 
the stream was too strong for her. At 
last she had to let go and swim, where- 
upon the rapids caught her, battered her 
about and spewed her forth far below. 
Pepper, on the other hand, plunged in 
boldly, swam with all her strength, and 
managed to crawl out just above the be- 
ginning of the white water. Then they 
both shook themselves, beginning at the 
head and ending in a disgusted quiver at 
the tip of the tail. 

After this we climbed steadily out of 
the canon, following in a general way the 
course of a stream tributary to it. At 
first the trail led over the shoulder far 
above, but gradually the brook rose to our 
level, and so we found ourselves once 
more among the trees. The sun splashed 
through luxuriantly, Douglas squirrels 
ran up and down in an affectation of 






'ias^ 



THE BIG MEADOW TRAIL 

haste, Calamity Jane loafed along, her 
ears swinging to each step as though on 
ball bearings. Occasionally, far ahead, 
and still considerably above us, we made 
out, through the forest, the sky-line of the 
ridge. 

By and by Calamity Jane stopped. 
Mechanically I felt for my slingshot. 
Then I saw that Old Slob had also 
stopped, and also Buckshot, and also 
Coco, from the elevation of whose back 
Billy was addressing some one. By 
standing in my stirrups I could, just 
make out a small boy on a sand bar in 
the middle of the stream. He was a very 
small boy indeed, and he wore an old pair 
of his big brother's overalls, cut off below 
and pulled up above until all I saw was 
blue denim and a straw hat, with just a 
hint of yellow curls and a single brown 
bare foot. The other brown bare foot 
was dug bashfully into the sand. An 
7 



VI 




THE PASS 

enormous fishing rod completed the 
outfit. 

Billy was attempting conversation. 

"Hello!" said she. 

*'How do, ma'am," very low, almost in- 
audible. 

"Caught any fish?" 

"No, ma'am" — ^the other foot began to 
dig out of sight. 

"What's your name?" 

"Johnny, ma'am." 

"Johnny what?" 

"Yes, ma'am." 

"How far is it to Big Meadow?" I 
asked. 

He looked up. The effect was very 
good, for he proved to be an honestly 
homely infant with a wide engaging 
mouth and gray eyes. 
'^ "Jest over the ridge, ma'am — sir." 

^i\j "Well, good luck," we wished him, and 

jJ'^'^^ ^. rode on. 

" >-' 8 




THE BIG MEADOW TRAIL 

"Woof, woof!" remarked Pepper. 
That did not mean that she was angry 
at the small boy or meant him bodily 
harm. It was only her way of announc- 
ing that she was an Airedale and exclusive. 
Then she leaped in the air twice, turning 
completely around each time, bit her tail 
with an appearance of fulfilling an im- 
portant obligation, and trotted after us 
with the virtuous air of having done her 
full duty. 

We topped the ridge and so came to 
Big Meadow. 

Big Meadow lies in a shallow cup. It 
is exactly like a lake, only the waters are 
the green grass, arms of which reach 
among and around wooded knolls like 
bays and estuaries. A forest surrounds it, 
and hills surround the forest, and moun- 
tain peaks the hills. You have to travel 
some miles to appreciate the latter fact, 
however. During those miles you ride in 
9 



THE PASS 

the woods, with occasional openings for 
brooks and thickets and other wilderness 
necessities of the kind, until all at once you 
look out over California, lying seven thou- 
sand feet below. Or if you happen to go 
in the other direction you merely bob up 
and down little ridges until the trail 
emerges from cover, at which point it 
stands on edge and you climb up to snow 
banks. But at Big Meadow itself there 
is little to convince you of elevation unless, 
happening to botanize or to carry a heavy 
pail of water, you shall find your wind 
short. 

Prevented from crossing the meadow 
by a wire fence, we rode on for some dis- 
tance through the woods. Then we came 
upon a number of young men building 
apparently a stockade. 

They were tall, straight, sturdy young 
men, with tanned, solemn faces and pre- 
ternaturally grave eyes. They had dug 
10 



THE BIG MEADOW TRAIL 

a circular trench some three feet deep, and 
were now engaged in placing therein 
as many large logs as would stand 
upright side by side. They had a horse 
and an axe and a cross-cut saw; that was 
about all. The rest they did with their 
hands and most excellent muscles. It 
seemed rather a titanic undertaking this; 
and in view of their statement that the 
structure was to be a corral, perhaps ex- 
cessive. A kangaroo would have diffi- 
culty in negotiating a much lower bar- 
rier, and a locomotive could hardly have 
plunged through. However, they were 
certainly having fun doing it; and per- 
formed the necessary feats of strength 
with a happy superabundance of energy 
that possibly was in itself an explanation 
of the stockade. No mere corral could 
adequately have exercised these lusty 
young mountaineers. 

They directed us a few hundred feet 
11 




THE PASS 

farther to the main camp, where we found 
the Ranger and his wife, a cordial wel- 
come, a little tent for our fatigue, a 
hearty supper for our hunger, and a cabin 
with a big roaring fireplace across all one 
end for the evening. 



12 



THE FOREST RANGER 



II 

THE FOREST RANGER 

Big Meadow flourished under a benign 
and patriarchal government. The For- 
est Ranger was the head of it. His many 
big sons hearkened to his counsels and 
obeyed his commands implicitly and 
cheerfully; the women looked to him as 
the women in the tents of Shem looked 
to their masters; and the very beasts 
seemed to repose trust in him as the be- 
neficent arbiter of their destinies. So 
much giving, so much ordering of affairs 
had bred in him a certain deliberate large- 
ness of spirit. He never had to assert 
his authority, because by habit it had 
long since become assured. His control j^ 

seemed almost Indian in its scope; and \ 

15 




THE PASS 

yet it was in no sense an oppressive con- 
trol. The kindly breadth of his spirit 
seemed to find its exact counterpart in 
his appearance, for he was deep-chested, 
thick-shouldered, sturdy of limb; and his 
massive, handsome face, with twinkling 
eyes, was well set off by his close-cropped 
grizzled hair. 

We talked together a good deal in the 
course of the next few days. He turned 
out to be an enthusiast on the subject of 
his calling. The salary of a forest ranger 
is small, but he habitually spent part of 
it for supplies and tools denied him by 
the Government. He failed to under- 
stand the niggardly poUcy, but proved no 
^ ^ --^ bitterness. 

They told me to send in a list of fire- 

(/^\ fighting tools in my district," he said, with 

a jolly chuckle. "My district then was 

^y^ from Kings River to the Kaweah. At 

that time all the fire-fighting tools within 

16 



n 




THE FOREST RANGER 

sixty miles was four rakes that I made 
myself out of fifty cents' worth of nails." 

He was hopeful, however, and saw a 
future. 

"I like the mountains," he told me, 
"and I like my district, and I have the 
best trail crew in the reserves. Some day 
the Government will wake up, and then 
all the boys who are doing good work and 
keeping at it will get their chance. Why, 
my oldest boy was making good wages 
in the mill, but I told him he'd better quit 
and come in with me. The wages might 
not be so good; but a mill man is only a 
mill man, and a forest ranger is, or will be, J 
in the line of promotion. And then, too, ^ 
he's out of doors — and responsible/' 

He had followed his own advice; for ^.'^^ • >^ 
he was a man of some property and -- * ^H 
known ability, and had gone out of busi- -3 

ness and politics to take this subordinate i 

position. ^r- ^""^^^"^ ^ r 

17 



"^ 




THE PASS 

"I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat," 
said he, with another of his delightful 
chuckles, "and it's mighty handy, for 
when my friends tackle me for especial 
favors I just tell them I have a hard 
enough time holding my own job." 

Naturally a man of his fiber made ene- 
mies. He was, perhaps, a little too arbi- 
trary sometimes; and it was hard, very 
hard, for him to acknowledge himself in 
the wrong. A powerful influence for his 
removal was last summer brought to bear 
by certain people whom his rigid enforce- 
ment of game and forest regulations had 
oif ended, and by some others in whose 
case, it must be confessed, he had made 
mistakes. Luckily, an inspector who 
knew a man held up his hands for him, 
otherwise the service would have lost a 
valuable servant. Men who work for the 
love of it are too scarce to lose. 

The Ranger had, moreover, a most in- 
18 



THE FOREST RANGER 

teresting and sound outlook on life. He 
had lived much among men in his com- 
mercial and political career, and he had 
from his earliest youth lived much also 
in the vast solitudes of the mountains. 
The material he gathered in the lowland 
he digested and ruminated in the high- 
lands. The result was a common-sense 
philosophy which he expressed with much 
sententiousness. 

In a grove near the camp was an out- 
of-door smithy and wood-working shop. 
There every conceivable job of repair and 
manufacture was undertaken. While I 
was watching the Ranger blueing a rifle 
sight, one of the younger boys brought 
up a horse and began rather bunglingly 
to shoe the animal. I watched the opera- 
tion for awhile in silence. 

"The boy is a little inexperienced," I 
ventured to suggest after a time. "Aren't 
you afraid he'll lame the horse?" 
19 




THE PASS 



V. 



^^^:3r::r4^ 



The Ranger glanced up. 

"Every one of the boys has to do his 
own shoeing and repairing of all kinds," 
said he. "He's been shown how, and he'll 
just have to learn. I made up my mind 
some time ago that I would rather have 
a hcrse weak in his hoof than a boy weak 
in his intellect." 

From that we came to talking of boys, 
and education, and chances in hf e. 

"I have eight boys of all ages," said he, 
"and I have given a lot of thought to 
them. They are getting the best educa- 
tion I can buy for them — a man does not 
get far without it. And then, besides^ I 
am teaching them to be thorough, and to 
do things with their hands as well as with 
their heads. I want them to be like the 
old fellow who built his stone wall four 
foot high and five foot wide. Somebody 
asked him what he did it for. 'Well,' said 
he, 'there's a heap of wind in this country, 
20 




THE FOREST RANGER 

and I wanted her so that if she should 
blow over she'd be a foot higher after the 
trouble than she was before.' " 

He laughed with genuine enjoyment 
of his own story, and plunged the sight 
into the forge fire. 

"Turn 'em loose, that's the way to do it. 
Teach them to take care of themselves, 
and then they will. Why, the youngster 
is all over the hills, and he is only six 
year old." 

I said that the day before we had seen 
him over the divide. 

"Yes, and some day when he gets left 
over a divide somewhere by accident, he'll 
get back all right ; and when he grows up 
he will be more fond of divides than of 
pool rooms and saloons. My wife used 
to worry over my letting the boys go 
hunting when they were so young. One 
day especial she came to me in a regular 
panic. Xook here, Sam,' she said, 'here's 
21 



THE PASS 

a piece in the paper that says little Jack 
Hooper has shot himself in the leg, and it 
will have to be cut off. Suppose that 
should happen to one of our boys?' 
*Well,' I told her, *I would rather have a 
boy on one sober leg than two drunken 
ones,' and that is about right, I do be- 
lieve." 

He had the old frontiersman's belief 
in the axe and the rifle. At any time of 
day could be heard the report of firearms. 
"Somebody's sighting his rifle," was al- 
ways the explanation. The expenditure 
of ammunition — expensive, high-power 
ammunition — ^was something enormous, 
but was considered a good investment. 

"Yes, Jim is a tolerable reliable shot," 
agreed the Ranger ; and that really meant 
that Jim was sure death. "Johnny has a 
kind of notion he can stick to leather," 
meant that Johnny could ride out the 
wildest bucker. They knew and had 
22 





THE FOREST RANGER 

named every deer for miles around. At 
the time we visited Big Meadow they 
were discussing "Old Three Toes," who 
had for years eluded them. Subse- 
quently the Ranger wrote me that Three 
Toes had been killed, and had proved to 
be of eight points. Certainly these 
smooth-moving quiet giants and supple 
boys could all pass examinations in the 
Arabic education of a man — to ride, 
shoot, and speak the truth. 

The Ranger was just in for a few days. 
He had, of course, ridden the mountains 
far, so we had great fun discussing trails 
and ways through, and the places where 
we had both been, and where he had been 
and I had not. In that manner we became 
interested in the Roaring River, a stream 
that had heretofore impressed us merely 
as waterfalls and cascades dropping some 
thousands of feet into the Kings River 
canon. Now it seemed that there existed 
23 



w 



THE PASS 

upper reaches among the granites and 
snows. He told me quite simply of the 
meadows and streams in the two long 
canons. Somehow the names fascinated 
me — Roaring River, forking into Cloudy 
and Deadman's Canons, beneath Table 
and Milestone Mountains of the Great 
Western Divide. It is a region practi- 
cally unvisited. 

"There ought to be bear up there," said 
the Ranger, "and I know there's deer." 

He drew a rough map, showing some 
landmarks as he remembered them from 
a visit made ten years before. 

"If it wasn't for Billy," thought I, 
"we'd try it." 

But Billy arose to her full five feet and 

demanded to know what that had to do 

with it. When Billy demands things 

from her extreme height it is politic to 

*y diplomatize. So the subject dropped. 

^ ^^^ We led luxurious lives. I joined the 



'<3i -«& 



THE FOREST RANGER 

littlest children perched on stockade logs 
already in place, or rode with the Ranger 
near camp. Billy talked learnedly about 
"starters" or "sponges" with the women, 
or reveled in starch. Starch she had for- 
gotten the delights of, so she stiffened 
everything in sight until material gave 
out. Then she cast a speculative eye on 
Pepper and her bristling terrier coat, but 
thought better of it. 

And Pepper and Tuxana enjoyed 
themselves also. A trough of milk was 
always kept full for the various dogs 
about the place. After a breakfast from 
it, they would dig happily for ground 
squirrels and woodchucks. They never 
caught any, but accomphshed some noble 
excavations. All that could be seen of 
any one of them was a quivering tail / ^4 
and a shower of earth. Then suddenly 
a hinder end would appear, wriggling 
backward; a mud- whiskered, snap-eyed 
25 



THE PASS 

happy countenance would pop out, look 
about for an instant vacantly, and whisk 
back again in a panic, lest an instant had 
been wasted. At night they straggled in 
tired, dirty, disgraceful, with open, vacu- 
ous smiles decorated by three inches of 
hanging tongue, to flop down flat on the 
cabin floor. There they snoozed all the 
evening, their hind legs occasionally 
twitching as they raced through dreams 
of easily caught woodchucks. 

The evenings were cold, so we assem- 
bled then about the big fireplace in the 
main cabin. We made quite a gathering, 
and the talk was of many things. Two 
other forest rangers dropped in, both fine 
fellows. 

The average citizen thinks of the forest 
ranger as a man whose main duty is to 
ride here and there through the reserve, 
picnicking at night, and generally en- 
joying life. This is not so. The ranger, 
26 



THE FOREST RANGER 

in addition to his fire patrol and fire fight- 
ing, has to keep trails in order, improve 
old trails, mark out and build new ones. 
Even with the best of tools this is no mean 
feat of engineering in a high mountain 
country; but until recently the Govern- 
ment has afforded its servants mighty 
little help in that direction. Last sum- 
mer (1904) was made an appropriation of 
fifty dollars for powder, the first ever is- 
sued, in a granite country! In addition 
to his trail work, the ranger has to regu- 
late the grazing, where the cattle men are 
all at war with one another and with au- 
thority ; to see that sheep are excluded ; to 
oversee campers and settlers; and to pro- 
tect the game. If he happens to have any 
spare time he tries to build himself shel- 
ters here and there through his district, 
generally at his own expense. 

All his accounts are audited at Wash- 
ington, by men who know nothing of 
27 



THE PASS 

local conditions. Many of his claims are 
apt to be disallowed, and must then come 
out of his own pocket. For instance, one 
man early in the season, pursuing sheep 
trespassers into the high country where 
the grass was still frozen, put in a claim 
for two or three sacks of horse feed. 
Claim disallowed on the ground that he 
should depend on natural feed. He has 
to fight red tape at Washington, natural 
difficulties in the field, powerful interests 
on whose toes he must tread in order to 
fulfill his duty as ranger, and in some 
cases gross neglect on the part of time- 
serving or incompetent superiors. 

"What sort of a bird is a supervisor, 
anyway?" one asked me once. "I never 
even saw the tail feathers of one." 

As a final and additional discourage- 
ment the ranger is apt to be laid off 
part of the year on grounds of econ- 
omy, so that he is forced either to seek 
28 




B»teai^.iri^^^:S-fiMfe 


^. 










^^^^- l^^^^l^^l 




^^^^Mj-%.. •> - . ■■■^^■' 1 


^1 




i 


i-'^*- i -'irriv^'' ^ 


1 






^X 




Im^Wi^^ -i 


^ 


Mfe^^?- 


Hr> • * ^ v^ '^^^S*^ 


^^KijI^^m^B 


HyBA ¥ jj^ i "^ jH 




iifoi ' "^'/^ x.ir,-3-re» 


•*»:..< St _^- 




m-< 






■^: ■ ■ ¥" J-j.,.. 


-** ^.v]-. 


fe^- ^"j^a 




^§U .,--^ , -- ■ ■ -. . '<:t!9lH 





THE FOREST RANGER 

temporary work — always hard to find — 
or to lie idle. 

In spite of these difficulties, or perhaps 
by the very fact that they discourage all 
but the enthusiasts, the rank and file of the 
forest service is especially good. While 
we were at Big Meadow news came of a 
thousand dollar trail appropriation — the 
first substantial appropriation of the sort. 
The rangers rejoiced as heartily as though 
each had been left the money as a personal 
legacy. I know many who spend a large 
part of their wages in the improvement of 
their districts, and each and every one 
lives in the high hope that some day the 
service will get its desert of attention and 
compensation. With a strong and able 
leader these men would go far. They, 
with their endless discussions of new 
routes and possible trails and discovered 
"ways through," are the true pioneers of 
a vast and rich country. 
29 



THE PASS 

At the end of three days Wes had not 
yet appeared. We decided to move on, 
leaving word for him to overtake us. The 
evening before our departure Billy took 
affairs into her own hands. 

"Now see here," said she, "why can't 
we go into the Roaring River country?" 

"Because I don't know anything about 
it," said I. 

"What's that to do with it?" 

"Well," I pointed out, "unless you 
know a country, you never are sure of 
where you are going to camp or of how 
long your day is going to be. It's too un- 
certain, and it's likely to be hard work." 

"It won't be hard work for me," she 
argued. "No matter how rough the travel 
is all I have to do is to sit on Coco while 
you work; and as for standing a long 
day, how long were we the time we 
couldn't ford the Kings?" 

'Well, not very long." 



THE FOREST RANGER 

"Stop and think. We broke camp at 
half past seven; and then we went to 
Millwood, and didn't stop for lunch, and 
got to the river at five. Then how long 
were we trying to ford?'* 

"Not long," said I, weakly. 

"It was until black dark; and this is 
midsummer. There!" 

We argued at length. Finally we com- 
promised. We were to go up in the Roar- 
ing River country just as far as it was 
comfortable and easy. If hardships be- 
gan we were to turn back. With this 
Billy was satisfied. I think she knew that 
we would never turn back once we had 
tasted the adventure of a first repulse. 




31 






f 



ROARING RIVER 




i 



Ill 

ROAEING EIVER 

So we received a bag of venison jerky 
as a parting gift and set out for the 
Rowell Meadow Trail. Wes was to fol- 
low. By dusk we had gained a long strip 
of green grass running up a shallow ra- 
vine to the darkness of the woods, a wide, 
fair lawn sloping to a flowing brook, and 
four great yellow pines, one of them pros- 
trate. To the broken limbs of the latter 
we tethered our animals while we un- 
packed. Each horse, when freed, walked 
immediately to a patch of deep dust each 
must already have remarked, took a satis- 
fying roll, shook vigorously, and fell to 
eating in the strip of green grass. Tux- 
ana lay down. Pepper, warm blooded and 
thick coated, stood belly deep in the 






..::i^^ 



THE PASS 

stream, an expression of imbecile satisfac- 
tion on her countenance. Billy began to 
scrape together a wagon load or so of the 
dry pine needles for a bed, while I took 
the camp shovel and dug out a fireplace 
on the edge of the brook. At this point 
the turf sloped down and over the very 
stream, so I could turn directly from my 
fire to dip up water, which was unusual 
and comforting. In ten minutes supper 
was under way. The dry pine twigs 
crackled and spluttered, throwing a vi- 
bration of smokeless heat straight up. 
The three kettles set up a bubbling. 
Over the stream and up the incline of 
"^"^ the mountain an oliveback was singing 
his deliberate, clear, liquidly beautiful 
vespers. From the thin screen of asps 
around the meadow sloping above us 
T came the rambling warble of the purple 
finch. A rock wren raved near; and a 
water ouzel dipped and swung close to 
86 



ROARING RIVER 

the current of the stream. Great austere 
shadows lay athwart our lawn; the winds 
of a mighty space beyond the pines 
breathed softly across the air warmed by 
the sun that had left us. Evening, al- 
ways big and fearsome in the mountains, 
hovered imminent, ready to swoop in its 
swift California fashion. 

Suddenly Pepper, who had long since 
emerged from the stream, raised her head. 

"Woof, woof!" she grumbled under 
her breath. 

Once we used to pay attention when 
Pepper said "Woof, woof!" but that time 
was gone by. Pepper is an actress. When 
she can gain no attention by cocking her 
head to one side, raising one ear, cavorting 
nimbly in mid-air, or madly biting a 
much-abused tail, she looks fixedly into 
space and growls in mighty threat and 
great ferocity. One who did not know 
Pepper would imagine that by means of y^fr^ 

37 



THE PASS 

preternaturally keen senses she had dis- 
covered a lurking danger of which she 
warned us and from which she was pre- 
pared to defend us. But we knew Pep- 
per, so we paid no attention. In a mo- 
ment, however, Tuxana also showed 
symptoms. We got to our feet. Far 
down the slope, in the direction from 
which we had come, we thought to catch 
a gleam of white among the pines. Pres- 
ently we saw another. Then sounded a 
faint, shrill whistle. Both dogs bounded 
away. In a few minutes we were lifting 
heavy packs of supplies from the morose 
Dinkey and the faithful Jenny, while 
Wes, a broad grin on his face, made a 
dive for the kettles. 

That meant mail, the first for two 
months. We built a big fire by which to 
read. The magazines were put away in 
"the library" — a flour sack — while we de- 
voured our letters. 

38 




ROARING RIVER 



The library was a wonderful affair. 
Besides the magazines, it contained a va- 
riety surely. At first when off on a long 
trip you do not pay much attention to 
reading matter, but after a time you save 
everything you can lay your hand on. We 
possessed about twenty dime novels — 
property of Wes — ^having to do with the 
adventures of Nick Carter, the Sleuth, 
and with marvelous deeds of a youth of 
sixteen, known as Dick Merriwell. Both 
heroes were copper-riveted, and through- 
out the most bewildering catastrophes we 
preserved a comfortable confidence that 
they would come out all right. Then 
there were two books in Spanish, one vol- 
ume of obscure but interesting slavers' ad- 
ventures, two remarkably cheap novels of 
the English nobility, one of Stevenson's, 
two saddle catalogues, and a bushel of old 
newspapers. 

The next morning we made an early 
39 



c 





THE PASS 

start, and by ten o'clock were looking 
across a wide sweep of pine country to 
the long crest of the Great Western Di- 
vide. Between us and it intervened low, 
rolling mountains covered with timber. 
To the left, many miles, and beyond a 
ridge cleft to admit the passage of Roar- 
ing River, we divined the tremendous 
plunge of the Kings River Canon. To 
the right, again many miles, we discerned 
the sheer, bald granite peaks, worn smooth 
by glacial action, capped and streaked by 
snow, over which our way must lead were 
we to gain the canon of the Kaweah. In 
the meantime, our first task must be to 
cross the wide pine country below us until 
we had gained the canon down which 
plunged the Roaring River. There we 
were promised an old mine trail leading 
up to the last sharp ascent. 

To our surprise we found the way easy, 
though a little bewildering. The pines 
40 






ROARING RIVER 

were full of streams, and the streams had 
here and there formed meadows rich with 
feed, and on the feed grazed small, wild 
bands of the mountain cattle. They 
had tracked the country in all directions, 
and as the mine trail had never been 
blazed or monumented, it became increas- 
ingly difficult to follow. Not that it mat- 
tered much. We knew our direction ; and, 
indeed, we soon cut loose from convention 
and struck off directly cross country. 
Sooner or later, provided we kept to the 
straight line, we were bound to come to 
Roaring River. 

The country was delightful. We could 
not understand why it was so little known. 
The meadows lay fair and green, sur^ V^X 
rounded by dense thickets of cottonwoods --..^^Jy^ 
or quaking asps, and islanded with round 
bushes. The woods were thick and tall, v 
The travel under foot was not rough, as 
roughness goes in the high mountains. 
41 




:^ 



THE PASS 

Of course, we were not able entirely to 
keep to the straight line. The thickets 
forced us to detour; the streams flowed 
sometimes in miniature unscalable canons. 
Often the pines gave place to bold out- 
crops, which must be avoided, or wide 
patches of manzanita or snow-bush, 
through which it was impossible to force 
our way. The shoulder of Mt. Brewer, 
however, was our guiding mark, and we 
steadily neared its shadow. 

Lunch of hard tack and raisins we ate 
in the saddle. We saw many game tracks, 
bear and deer. Once, while skirting an 
aspen thicket and buck- jumping through 
a windfall, we jumped a deer within a 
few feet of the leading horse. Evidently 
he had intended lying hidden in the hope 
of escaping observation, but we had 
headed too directly toward him. He 
turned sharp to the right, and encircled 
'\J/"^\ our entire outfit, leaping high in the stiff - 



ROARING RIVER 

legged bounds of the blacktail, until at 
last, like a phantom, he entered the 
closing-in point of the trees and was 
gone. 

About three in the afternoon we came 
out over Roaring River. It was well 
named. The waters dashed white and 
turbulent far below us, filling the forest 
with their voice. We turned sharp to the 
right, and after some scrambling and un- 
certainty among ledges and boulders 
gained the floor of the valley. Here we 
rode for some time until we caught sight 
of green on the opposite bank, made a 
precarious ford through swift water and 
over uncertain boulders, and at last threw 
off the packs on a knoll of pine needles 
rising but slightly above the thick grasses. 
We had been ten hours in the saddle. 



^3 



DEADMAN'S CANON 



v:^f^ 



^'"'''^ 




IV 



DEADMANS CANON 

A WINDING path led through a fringe 
of bushes down to the stream. There a 
back eddy behind a rock offered a peace- 
ful dip to our kettles. Elsewhere the 
water leaped and boiled from one pool to 
another, without pause for breath, as 
though exultant. Immediately about the 
knoll on which we had spread our tarpau- 
lins the grass, sown with flowers, grew 
tall. Over opposite, beyond the trees, a 
high ridge rose imminent. To the left 
and up the canon a rounded bluff marked 
the forking of the stream. We were 
snugly backed by a pine slope, efiicient 3^ 
screen to the lofty mountains but just be- %&^ 
47 ^-^^J. 






THE PASS 

yond, A great crying of waters filled the 
hollow of our canon. At first it drew 
our attention almost too painfully, then 
dropped into accustomedness, and below 
its roaring we made out the elfin voices 
of the rapids which I have elsewhere de- 
scribed.* 

It was quite dark by the time we had 
cooked ourselves something to eat. Wes 
explored a little in the dusk, and reported 
another meadow above, and a cache of 
provisions in a small tent, evidently the 
property of the man who had brought 
the cattle into the country that spring 
and would take them out again in the fall. 
I whipped a few eddies — ^there were no 
pools — and caught three or four trout. 
We turned in well satisfied with our lot 
in Hf e. 

The next morning we decided, in spite 
of stout protests on the part of that young 

* See "The Forest," p. 54. 



^^ 48 



f 



K 




DEADMAN'S CANON 

woman, that Billy's ten hours' ride of the 
day before had been enough for her. She 
was to keep camp, while Wes and I ex- 
plored the possibilities of the right-hand 
canon. So she strapped on "Black Mike," 
a six-shooter, diminutive, but with the 
marvelous property of making her feel 
perfectly safe against anything up to and 
including earthquakes. Thus fortified 
she bade us farewell, and we splashed 
across the swift waters of the river. 

The canon proved to be seven or eight 
miles long. It progressed upward by a 
series of terraces. We would ride through 
a fringe of woods, or over a meadow, and 
then climb vigorously to right or left of 
a slide or broken fall until we had gained 
another level. The canon walls were very 
high, very sheer, and of nearly unbroken 
stone. The glacial action had brought 
them to syncline near the bottom, so that 
to all intents and purposes we were trav- 

49 




THE PASS 

eling a smooth half -cylinder of granite in 
whose trough a certain amount of fertile 
earth had accumulated. The scenery thus 
was inexpressibly bleak and grand. 

After perhaps two hours we came in 
sight of the end of the canon. There the 
stream fell sheer in a fall of indetermi- 
nate height. The canon walls widened 
around to the grand sweep of a cirque, 
and we were able to view for the first time 
the mountain barrier over which we must 
win. 

Although we were still some miles 
from the beginning of the ascent, we un- 
saddled and picketed our horses. The rest 
of the reconnaissance would be easier 
afoot. While munching our hardtack and 
jerky we examined minutely through our 
glasses the face of the mountain range. 
To the left of the fall it seemed green, and 
(\j^ beyond that were ledges and niches and 
possibilities up to the snow that filled the 




'^21=^ 



DEADMAN'S CANON 

saddle. We followed painstakingly every 
step of the way. It might be done. 

Finally I announced my intention of 
taking a look at the fall. Wes said he 
would climb up a break in the right- 
hand wall. We separated, having agreed 
on six-shooter signals — two shots, come; 
three shots, come quick. 

I found the distance to the falls much 
greater than I had anticipated. The air 
was very clear at this elevation, and I 
walked for three-quarters of an hour be- 
fore I reached the patch of snow at the 
foot of the steep grade. There, to my 
delight, I discovered an old miner's trail 
leading leftward of the falls through the 
greenery, which turned out to be tall 
brush. The way was steep and much 
washed, but perfectly practicable to good 
horses such as ours. I toiled upward, 
stopping pretty often to breathe, until I 
stood on the small level above the falls. 
61 



THE PASS 

Thence, the trail still leading in my direc- 
tion, I continued to climb, zig-zagging 
from one advantage to another, rather 
shortwinded, for I was in a hurry, but 
steadily gaining toward the dazzling up- 
per peaks. 

My first intention had been to explore 
merely this far, but as the afternoon was 
still new I made up my mind to follow the 
trail to the end. The calendar said Au- 
gust, but up here it was still early spring. 
The ground was soggy with water, and 
from every direction leaped waterfalls 
and cascades. Of course, I was now far 
above timber line, but the short-hair grass 
had gained foothold in some fortuitous 
little levels. As I topped one of these, I 
came upon two golden eagles standing on 
the rocks not twenty feet from my face. 
They did not seem greatly alarmed, but 
rose slowly with a flapping of mighty 
wings. Shortly after, I arrived at the 
52 



DEADMAN'S CANON 

end of the miner's trail. All that re- 
mained of the camp was a leveled spot on 
the shale, some timbers, a rusty pick, and 
the usual cans and bottles. Some brilliant 
specimens of copper ore showed what had 
been the object of the prospecting. The 
men must have had to pack every stick of 
firewood up from the canon below. 

I did not pause here, for the afternoon 
was spending, and it was a long ride back 
to our Roaring River camp. The trail 
ended, so I climbed on more circum- 
spectly, trying to monument a way 
through for horses. This is a trick re- 
quiring some practice, for you must 
know, in the first place, just what a horse 
can or cannot do in an unbroken country ; 
and in the second place, you must under- 
stand enough of formations to know 
whether or not you are leading yourself 
to a blind pocket of a pinched-out ledge. 
The way I found was rough, but passable, 
53 



THE PASS 

and by another half hour I had reached 
the edge of the snow. 

For the first time I looked back. Dead- 
man's Canon extended from directly be- 
low me. The strip of earth down its 
trough, which had seemed so ample to us 
while we were traveling through it, now 
had narrowed to a mere streak of green. 
The glacial sweep of the half cylinder 
from cliiF to cliff appeared almost un- 
broken. I could make out Roaring River 
Canon and the place where Kings River 
Canon should lie, but even beyond that, 
rising from the lowest depths, tier after 
tier, were mountains and ranges innumer- 
able. The day was remarkably clear, and 
I could see without effort the snow-clad 
peaks back of Yosemite, and that, as the 
crow flies, was one hundred and thirty-five 
miles. I made out also mountains we had 
lived with, and lost sight of, weeks before. 
It forced home a feeling of the discrep- 



DEADMAN'S CANON 

ancy between what a man can conceive 
and what he can do. Here I could leap 
at one eyesight to the valley of the 
Tuolumne, yet it would take me about 
three toilsome weeks to make the notion 
good. 

Peaks of every sort were all about me 
as on a spacious relief map. The imme- 
diate surroundings, except back of me in 
the case of the mountain I was climbing, 
and to the east of me, where intervened 
the Great Western Divide, were fortu- 
nately lower than myself, so I could see 
to the natural horizon. The general 
effect to the distant north and west was 
of an undulating pine-green carpet, from 
which sprang boldly here and there 
groups of white or granite peaks. At the 
middle distance, however, the mantle 
broke into a tumult of stone and snow. 

I here left the picking of a horse route, 
and climbed straight up the snow. From 
55 




THE PASS 

this point the problem was easy, and the 
detailed selection of a trail would bear 
postponement. In twenty minutes' hard 
scrabbling I had gained the saddle, and 
looked over into the valley of the Ka- 
weah. 

I suppose this point represents the wild- 
est and most rugged of the Sierras. The 
Great Western Divide, above fourteen 
thousand feet, runs down from the north- 
west. It is crossed at one angle by 
a tremendous and splintered upheaval 
called the Kaweah Group, and at another 
by the lesser but still formidable ridge on 
which I stood. 

Three canons headed almost at my feet : 
Deadman's Canon, up which we had that 
day ridden; Cloudy Canon, which turned 
sharp back toward its neighbor, to come 
to rest beneath the same peak; and the 
mighty canon of the Kaweah, a second 
\ '^y ) Yosemite, with its polished granite 
\ ^' • 56 



DEADMAN'S CANON 

aprons, its awful plunges, and the bleak 
ruggedness of its snows and spires. 

I looked down then from the saddle to 
the headwaters of the Kaweah River with 
some curiosity. To my left was a great 
cirque, a semi-circle of sheer mountains of 
nothing but granite and snow. In the cup 
was a torment of splintered granite debris 
unrelieved by a single spear of any green 
thing; and two lakes, one slightly higher 
than the other. The upper of these two 
lakes was frozen solid; but from the 
lower, in which floated white ice, a stream 
crept to the edge of the cirque. 

There it plunged several hundred feet 
to a second level, again circular in shape. 
This contained another lake, and a green 
meadow, through which filtered innumer- 
able snaky streamlets, but no trees. Again 
the plunge to still a third level; and at the 
very lower end of this, beyond the usual 
lake, were two or three tamarack trees. 
57 



THE PASS 

Then the canon floor disappeared in the 
middle of the earth. 

And over opposite, contemporaneous 
with my own elevation, were the giants of 
the Kaweah group, black, scarred by 
storms, wreathed with snow clinging in 
streaks to their pohshed steep sides. 

I climbed part way down the southern 
slope of the saddle in which I stood. The 
way was over shale for a few hundred 
feet, then narrowed to a steep rock 
"chimney," like a funnel-mouth pointing 
to the abysses below. Nothing could pass 
that way. I retraced my steps to the sad- 
dle and climbed to the top of the peak to 
eastward, whence I could look down into 
Cloudy Canon and over to the Great 
Western Divide. Between Cloudy Canon 
and the headwaters of the Kaweah lay 
another saddle, lower than the one I 
had just climbed. Moreover, just beyond 
X it was a red mountain. Now the Ranger 
--x } 58 



DEADMAN'S CANON 

had given us a red mountain as a land- 
mark for our possible pass. Therefore, I 
concluded that the lower saddle would be 
our best "way through," and that we 
should bring our pack train up Cloudy 
rather than Deadman's Canon. 

By now it was four o'clock. I returned 
to the saddle, spread my arms out, dug 
my heels in, and fairly sailed down the 
steep slope of snow. It did not matter 
much whether or not I fell — I merely 
rolled a greater or lesser distance. Be- 
hind me a cloud of snow rose thick as dust 
on a country road. It was glorious. 
Tuxana, who had followed me patiently, 
woke into wild excitement. She raced 
around and around, her hind legs tucked 
weU under her, her forelegs bent down 
in front, her ears back, and her eyes 
snapping with excitement. At last she 
understood the reason for this fool expe- 
dition. 

59 



THE PASS 

We were soon out of the snow, but even 
in soggy and rocky trails going down is 
quicker than going up — at ten thousand 
feet. We gained the bottom in three- 
quarters of an hour. There I fired my 
six-shooter and sat down on a rock, for I 
was pretty tired. In a little while Wes 
rode up, leading Bullet. 

He reported an interesting view and 
a fine glacier lake, but nothing of prac- 
tical importance. We rode home through 
the early twilight of deep canons, the 
domes and battlements above us looming 
huger and more portentous as the light 
failed. About seven o'clock we regained 
camp. Billy had caught some fish and 
cooked some supper. 

"To-morrow," said we, "we will go up 
to the head of Cloudy Canon; next day 
we will work over the pass, and so on 
down." 

The Ranger had told us that once we 

60 




Wes clears the trail. 



DEADMAN'S CANON 

had gained the saddle the rest was easy; 
and I had seen enough to convince me 
that a little hard work would get us to the 
top. Four days later we recamped at this 
very spot after our first repulse. 




61 • m^^ 



CLOUDY CANON 



CLOUDY CANON 

Cloudy Canon we found to differ 
from Deadman's Canon only in the fact 
that at its lower end it was more over- 
grown with aspen thickets, and at the 
upper end the jumps by terraces were 
rougher. The glacial polishings were 
seen to great advantage here, in some 
places so glossy, even on granite, as to 
shine in the sun like mirrors. Some of the 
meadows we had to cross proved boggy, 
some of the ascents full of broken and 
^gged debris. Still the travel was good 
enough, and by four or five o'clock we had 
gained the last cirque before the ascent to 
the saddle I had the day before seen from 
above. 

We camped on a flat just over the 
65 



THE PASS 

stream. The nearest wood was at some 
distance. By means of our riatas we 
dragged enough for a blaze. Patches of 
snow lay all about us. A cold wind 
sucked down from above, and as the gray 
of evening descended the immediate sur- 
roundings took on a black and desolate 
aspect. Even the water of the stream 
looked cold and steel color, as though it 
had but just melted from the ice, as, in- 
deed, was the case. 

The mountain above, however, was 
heavily stained with iron, and the red of 
this, catching the last rays of the sun after 
the other ranges had become slate-gray, 
caused it to glow as with some interior fire 
of incandescence. We watched it as we 
would watch a wood fire in a grate — this 
great mass of stone and snow — reddening 
and paling, burning with a fiercer, hotter 
combustion or cooling as it died. At last 
the evening shadow quenched it. 
66 



CLOUDY CANON 

In the meantime we had been exploring 
with our glasses. It was entirely out of 
the question to go straight up the canon. 
That was banked solid with snow perhaps 
fifty or sixty feet deep. The ascent to the 
right hand of the canon looked easy 
enough for some distance, but on that 
side at the base of the pass again inter- 
vened a sheet of snow. To the left all 
seemed clear, with the exception of a 
"nigger head," three-quarters of the way 
up. It might, however, be possible to get 
over this. Only actual reconnaissance 
could determine that point. 

By this time it had grown to be dis- 
tinctly cold. We had a good fire, and our 
sweaters, but even they could not entirely 
keep out the penetrating snow chill. So, 
as always in such cases, we decided on 
exercise and got out Tuxana's gunny- 
sack. 

Tuxana, as I have explained, is a bull 
67 



THE PASS 

terrier. She is built of whalebone springs. 
If you do not believe this, you should see 
her hunting through a high grass. Then 
you would observe her bounding three or 
four feet straight up in the air in order 
to get sight over the tops. 

Now Tuxana's character is simple, ear- 
nest and single-minded. What she un- 
dertakes she does with all her might, and 
nothing can distract her attention from 
it. And the things she delights in are 
three: The first is hunting, the second is 
swinging from a gunny sack, the third is 
swimming after a stick. I have men- 
tioned these in the order of their impor- 
tance. In all other matters Tuxana is 
staid and unexcited and of a reasonable 
disposition. But let a squirrel chirp, a 
bag move, or a stick appear, and Tux- 
ana's mental equilibrium totters. Life 
focusses. 

So I stood up and held the sack above 
68 



I 



^ 



CLOUDY CANON 

my head. Tuxana's eyes snapped. She 
leaped straight into the air higher than 
my shoulder, and her teeth came together 
viciously. 

"How'd you hke to get your hand in 
there?" asked Wes. 

At the third jump she managed to seize 
the bag. Her jaws clamped. Her eyes 
closed luxuriously for a moment. Thence- 
forward nothing could shake her loose. 
I swung her around my head; I pulled 
her along the ground. Always, her eyes 
half shut in pleasure, but snapping with 
beady Hghts beneath her hds, she resisted. 
Finally I paused. At once Tuxana as- 
sumed the aggressive. Half squatting 
she began to pull by little jerks. It was 
astonishing what power she developed. I 
was four times her weight, and yet 
I could hardly hold her. Finally I threw 
her the sack. Immediately Pepper, who 
had been awaiting the chance, sprang f or- 
69 



THE PASS 

ward to grab the other end. Growling 
fiercely the two dogs wrestled for posses- 
sion. In the end, however, Tuxana con- 
quered by virtue of her superior age 
and weight — Pepper was at that time 
only nine months old — and sat proudly 
on the sack, daring any one to take it 
from her. 

We moved aside the smallest and most 
prominent stones, laid out our saddle 
blankets next the ground, spread the big 
canvas taupaulin over them, added a 
wadded comforter or "sogun" as addi- 
tional softening, and finished the bed with 
our gray army blanket. The other end of 
the canvas then folded over the whole. 
Wes took the lantern and hunted himself 
a place to do likewise. 

It was very cold. We put on two suits 
of underwear and our sweaters and moc- 
casins. Then we turned in. Tuxana 
looked wistful, so we held up a corner, 
70 






CLOUDY CANON 

and she crawled down to our feet. How 
she breathed I cannot tell you, but she 
seemed perfectly happy. Pepper we cov- 
ered up carefully — we always did. In 
about ten seconds she got panicky because 
her head was covered, instituted a general 
upheaval of blankets, and got kicked out 
into the cold. This was the usual pro- 
gramme. 

Our noses turned cold, the stars over us 
seemed fairly to crackle in the heavens, 
the still silver mountains sparkled in the 
rare air. We could hear the swift dash of 
the snow-water in the creek below, the 
faint sound of the horse bell in the short- 
hair meadow. The wind lifted and let fall 
a corner of the tarpaulin. We were glad 
of woolen things and wind-turning covers 
and snug quarters. The remains of the 
fire glowed and sputtered faintly. To 
the south I could see in silhouette the 
dip of the saddle. It rose gloomy and 
71 



THE PASS 

forbidding, mysterious in its own black- 
ness. 

"Oh, but it's going to be some chillsome 
at four in the morning!" said I to Billy. 

So we went to sleep. 



72 



BLOODY PASS 



VI 

BLOODY PASS 

Four o'clock in the morning proved in- 
deed to be mighty cold. The sun was just 
gilding some peaks a long distance above 
us, but that did not do us any good. All 
the horses had moved over to the west- 
ward slope of the mountain, where they 
would be certain to catch the very first 
rays of warmth. Their hair stuck up dark 
and velvety. 

A hot cup of coffee went to the spot. 
Then we caught up the horses, and if 
there is anything more finger-numbing 
and distressing than to undo heavy leather 
hobbles stiff with frost, then I do not 
know what it is. We brought them in 
to camp. 

I left Wes to pack up, and pushed on 
in light marching order up the right hand 






THE PASS 

of the canon. Our way probably led to 
the left and over the "nigger-head," but 
it was thought best to overlook no bets. 
We agreed on a conventional six-shooter 
signal. 

It took me probably an hour to reach 
the snow line. I could make out a dim 
miner's trail as far as that, but of course 
it was lost beyond. A very steep climb 
over frozen snow-fields — utterly impossi- 
ble for horses — ^brought me to the ridge, 
and once again I looked into the canon of 
the Kaweah. The ridge ran up to a very 
knife edge of rock, some of it solid, some 
cut by the frost into blocks and some 
loose and wobbly, but none over eighteen 
inches wide. It fell away on either side 
for twenty or thirty feet. After two 
minutes I was glad to descend again to 
the snow. 

With many precautions against sHp- 
ping I skirted the base of the cliffs until 
76 




\, M 



We had just time to dig our heels in and brace for the shock when over 

she went. 



BLOODY PASS 

I had reached the saddle. There I walked 
out into plain sight on the snow and fired 
my six-shooter twice, by way of a signal 
to take the left hand, as the only possible 
route. Watching carefully through my 
glasses I made out Wes and Billy round- 
ing the pack stock together. Satisfied 
that they understood, I now turned my 
attention to the problem of surmounting 
the nigger-head. 

A very cursory examination proved to 
me that it would be impossible to pass 
above it. The upper side fell off sheer. 
Below it ran a narrow strip of rock and 
shale, steep as a roof, and dropping off 
straight into the main canon. 

The slant as it stood was too abrupt for 
footing. A horse would simply creep 
around below the precipice of the nigger- 
head until he came to the narrow steep 
roof. Then his weight would start an 
avalanche in the shale which would carry 
77 



THE PASS 

him off the edge to an untimely death. 
So I began to experiment, and soon dis- 
covered that by sitting down and kicking 
vigorously I could gouge out a little fur- 
row which would hold. It was tough on 
the shoes, and rather hard work ; but I sat 
there and kicked cheerfully until I had 
accomplished a nick from the head of 
the canon to the base of the nigger-head. 
It was rather an invisible sort of nick, and 
it ran only about twenty feet above the 
precipice, and it was very crumbly at best, 
but I looked upon it with pride and sat- 
isfaction. 

There remained only about forty feet 
to do. That ran through cliff-debris from 
the nigger-head. I went over it once to 
find the easiest route, then set myself vig- 
orously to rolling boulders aside, and to 
chinking the worst holes. This was rather 
good fun. The big stones went bounding 
and jumping away like living things, 
78 



BLOODY PASS 

striking fire at every contact, finally leap- 
ing from view over the last precipice, only 
to reappear after an interval minimized 
by distance, still rolling and bouncing un- 
til at last the repeated shocks broke them 
to pieces a thousand feet below. The 
smell of burning was in the air from the 
superheated stones. Gradually foot by 
foot I worked forward until at last, when 
Wes appeared around the corner riding 
Modesto, there remained not over ten feet 
to do. 

He dismounted and together we went 
at the remainder. Then we walked back 
and forth over the length of the trail test- 
ing for weak spaces, after which we rode 
across in sixty seconds, quite safely, but 
with many doubts. Our horses were the 
veterans of several hard mountain trips, 
and they stepped lightly and surely. So 
we gained the snowline. 

At this point the stream, somewhere be- 

79 



THE PASS 

neath a canon full of snow, headed in a 
small circular cup, whose sides sloped 
steeply to a glacier lake. The water of 
this lake was of a deep rich peacock-blue, 
typical of the glaciers, but quite impos- 
sible to describe. It was fringed by white 
ice, which ran out below the surface in 
ledges of the most perfect robin's-egg 
blue imaginable. The dazzling white, 
brilliant rich peacock, and paler translu- 
cent blue gave the impression of some 
rare and precious gem. 

The shores sloped very steeply, and 
were covered with snow which terminated 
only at the base of the sheer ridge above. 
Directly across the lake, and perhaps two 
hundred feet up, this ridge broke and 
spUntered. Wes and I climbed up and 
took a look at it. It ran in sharp needles 
of rock, knife-edge slabs struck upright, 
and jumbled ledge matter. Wes picked 
out a possibility. 

80 



BLOODY PASS 

"If they get through here, we'll have to 
take out a license for keeping goats," 
said Wes. 

We piled up small stones to help in 
some places, and pried out what obstruc- 
tions we could, but our best was mighty 
little. I have seen horses travel in rough 
country, but this little bit was the worst. 
However, we consoled ourselves with the 
Ranger's assurance that once to the top 
our troubles would be over. We started 
the horses along. First they had to skirt 
the lake and climb slanting up the steep 
snow bank. We anticipated no trouble in 
this, but when about half way up discov- 
ered something of which our light weight 
afoot had not apprised us. The top cov- 
ering was comparatively loose ; but earlier 
in the year, before the last snowfall, evi- 
dently a freezing rain had fallen, so about 
six inches under the surface lay a hard 
and slippery crust. 

81 



THE PASS 

Dinkey, always cocky and self-confi- 
dent, was the first victim. She slipped, 
attempted to recover, and went down. 
Slowly the weight of her pack overcame 
her balance, forcing her as one wrestler 
forces another. 

"Look out! She's going to roll over!" 
yelled Wes. 

He threw his riata over her head. We 
had just time to dig our heels in and brace 
for the shock when over she went. 

Now it was about a hundred feet down 
to the glacier lake, and we both knew that 
if Dinkey ever plunged into it we should 
never see her again. So we braced a 
mighty brace, and heaved a mighty 
heave. I can't describe the rest in detail. 
I know I slid ten feet or so on my heels, 
was upended, enveloped in a choking 
whirl of snow, felt the rope encircle me 
and so cast it loose, stopped rolling, 
cleared my eyes, saw the end of the rope 
82 




BLOODY PASS 

within a foot of me, grabbed it, and was 
again yanked through space. 

When the sky resumed its natural posi- 
tion I found that the combined efforts of 
Dinkey, Wes and myself had brought the 
outfit to a standstill just about one yard 
from the edge of the peacock-blue water 
in the glacier lake. We were covered with 
snow, and we sprawled at the end of what 
looked to be the track of an avalanche. 

"Well, we stayed with it," said Wes. 

We looked up. Billy was roosting on a 
rock with a camera in her hand. Bullet, 
good, wise old Bullet, had headed the rest 
of the pack train and was holding it there 
in the deep snow. Tuxana and Pepper, 
who had added to the joy of the scene by 
chasing around and around in mad circles, 
sat on their haunches with a please-do-it- 
again smile on their faces. 

It now became necessary to return 
Dinkey to her original position. We did 
83 



di 



THE PASS 

this very gingerly by leading her back to 
the starting place. She had completely 
lost her nerve and trembled pathetically. 
At this Wes and I rejoiced somewhat, for 
Dinkey heretofore had made us feel very 
inferior and ignorant. 

We now set ourselves in good earnest 
to the task of gaining the last hundred 
feet. A rope was attached to Bullet; we 
both took a hand. But Bullet walked 
across like a tight-rope dancer. At the 
piled up destruction of the boulders and 
ridges he took his time, smelt out each 
step, and passed without an accident. I 
rubbed his forehead for him, and left him 
on a tiny flat place just beyond the top. 

Jenny came next. She started confi- 
dently enough, following Bullet's lead, 
but soon had the bad luck to thrust one 
hind leg through a thin spot and down 
into a deep hole. In the recovery she fell 
on her side, and while we managed to 
84 





k' ^4fe' 



Bullet took his time, smelled out each step, and passed without an accident. 



BLOODY PASS 

prevent her rolling over, she came so near 
it that she uttered a sharp squeal of fright. 
Two years before Jenny had fallen from 
the trail, had caught on a narrow ledge, 
and had been slung thence bodily by 
means of two riatas. The experience had 
shattered her nerves. Now she went all 
to pieces. We undid her pack rope, teased 
the kyak from beneath her — gave her 
every chance in the world. But she re- 
fused even to try to get up. So we 
twisted her tail and pulled on her lead 
rope until she had to make some effort. 
Even then she struggled wildly, her eye 
fairly glazed with terror. Of course, she 
went down again, and yet again, flounder- 
ing like a big fish. We held her to the 
slope without too great difficulty, for we 
had good footholds, and little by little 
teased her along toward the edge of the 
snow and the beginning of the splintered 
rocks. There we hoped Jenny would get 
85 



THE PASS 

over her hysterics in the realization of ac- 
customed footing. The last ten feet she 
floundered forward on her fore knees, 
never even attempting to get more fully 
to her feet. 

Once secure we let her stand, while we 
ourselves carried over her pack to where 
Bullet patiently awaited us. Then, hav- 
ing decided that Jenny should have re- 
gained her poise by this time, we led 
her on. 

How she surmounted that hundred foot 
climb without breaking her fool neck will 
always be a problem. She slipped and 
skated and fell and recovered. The sharp 
edges cut her fearfully. Blood streaked 
her from a dozen wounds, ran down her 
white coat, even dripped on the rocks. 
We were sorry, but we could not help it. 
Finally we did gain the saddle, and look- 
ing back with deep breaths of relief 
named this Bloody Pass. 
86; 





BLOODY PASS 

Buckshot made the snow fields with 
nothing worse than several bad staggers, 
and the splintered rocks sagely and care- 
fully, testing each foothold, as was Buck- 
shot's fashion. Old Slob, too, did well, 
though he was badly frightened. At one 
spot it was necessary to jump from an 
unstable take-off up a little ledge. Old 
Slob, too anxious to do the thing prop- 
erly, rather over-did the matter; his pack 
over-balanced him, and he poised on the 
verge of falling directly backward off the 
mountain. That would have been the end 
of Old Slob. Fortunately my footing 
was good, so that by throwing every ounce 
of my weight into the riata by which I 
was leading him, I was able to decide the 
balance. 

So we led them up one at a time. The 

climbing was severe, for the altitude was 

somewhere about eleven thousand feet. 

We worked like slaves, and when,^ after 

87 



THE PASS 

various minor incidents of the kind al- 
ready detailed, we had crowded the last 
of the animals on the big flat rock at the 
top, we were glad to hmit the lea of a 
boulder for a rest. 

We ate hardtack and venison jerky and 
raisins, and told each other that the worst 
now was over. Indeed, as far as we could 
see, the descent did not seem to be espe- 
cially difficult. A series of ledges slant- 
ing into each other irregularly ran in 
natural lacets to the Umit of eyesight. 

After we had eaten we started down. 
The way was very rough, as you may im- 
agine, but opposed no insuperable obsta- 
cles to our animals. It was necessary only 
that one of us should scout far enough 
ahead to assure an open way from one 
broad ledge to another. This was not 
difficult, for a man afoot can get about 
much more rapidly than the horses. Oc- 
casionally, Wes and Billy would halt un- 
88 



BLOODY PASS 

til I had explored all the possibilities of a 
choice of several routes. 

In this way we worked down about a 
thousand feet. The passage in general 
was plain before us. We had to do a few 
hundred feet more of this ledge country, 
then step out on a long shale slide, which, 
however steep and unstable it might prove 
to be, would take us safely enough to the 
shores of the second glacier lake. There 
we could camp. 

I scouted ahead, came to a forty-foot 
drop, returned, took another way, came 
to the same forty-foot drop ; repeated the 
operation, gained exactly the same result. 

Then both of us men turned in to ex- 
plore in earnest. A half hour convinced 
us that we were in a cul-de-sac to which 
all possible routes from the saddle con- 
verged. There was no other way. Our 
glasses showed us impassable debris 
below. 

89 



THE PASS 

We sat down to face the situation. We 
could not go on; we could not camp here 
in the granite, where there was no feed, 
no water, no fuel. The nearest of those 
necessities was precisely whence we had 
started this morning. 

"We've got to go back," concluded 
Wes, reluctantly. 

It was by now three o'clock. We had 
been since daylight getting this far. Our 
horses were tired out from the rough 
climbing and the lack of food; they had 
not had a mouthful since they had ceased 
grazing late the previous night. Before 
us was a sharp thousand-foot climb, and 
then the extraordinary difficulties we had 
surmounted with so much pains and dan- 
ger. As if to add positively a story-book 
touch to the discouragement of the out- 
look, the sky clouded over, and a cold, 
sleety rain began to fall. 



90 



WE FALL BACK 



VII 

WE FALL BACK 

By this time it was three o'clock in the 
afternoon. We had to traverse before 
dark the distance we had taken since day- 
hght to cover. As additional full meas- 
ure, the clouds, which latterly had been 
gathering about the peaks of the Kaweah 
Group opposite, now swept across to en- 
velope us. Our horses were tired because 
of hunger and the hard day. We could 
anticipate only a bleak, hard camp to 
which we would have to drag wood at the 
end of our riatas before we could even get 
warm. 

Pepper and Tuxana alone were aggra- 
vatingly cheerful. They sniffed eagerly 
into all the crevices among the rocks, 
93 



THE PASS 

popped up bright-eyed over the tops of 
boulders, quivered with their anxiety to 
find out what all this expedition was 
about, anyway. It would have suited us 
better if they had adapted their demeanor 
more accurately to the situation. I wish 
I had a dog's vivid interest in mere living. 

Buckshot groaned and grumbled; Din- 
key swore, but up the ridge they had to 
climb again. In the desperation of great 
weariness is an apparently careless haste 
that sometimes accomplishes marvels. It 
carried us over the needles of rock and 
down the snow slopes without the smallest 
accident. Rain began to fall, at first like 
mist, then more heavily in long, pelting 
lines. Darkness was shutting in. 

At this point Billy and the dogs left us. 
They were to run down the snow lying 
deep in the canon. The crust was plenty 
strong enough to support a human being, 
with some to spare, but the horses would 
94 



WE FALL BACK 

probably have broken through. We 
watched her figure dwindle as she slid and 
slipped down the long white declivity. 
Our fate was to pick out in the darkness 
and rain the miserable and tortuous foot- 
hold we had that morning constructed. 
We speedily became wet through, after 
which the affair was an entire engross- 
ment in dark, slippery rocks, the trickle 
of waters, voids filled with gray, and con- 
stant shoutings of advice, speculation and 
encouragement from one to the other of 
us. The horses traveled doggedly, as 
tired horses will, their heads swinging. 

Finally we reached the bottom of the 
slope. A rush of white waters opposed 
us, but we plunged in without much at- 
tempt to find a ford, and emerged drip- 
ping on the other side. 

Billy was awaiting us, together with 
the dogs, now utterly crushed under the 
sudden realization that it was dark, and 
95 



THE PASS 

neither fire nor supper was forthcoming. 
They were beginning to regret certain 
scorned mush of happier days. 

An ahnost invincible disbelief in the 
possibility of comfort overcame us. Mo- 
tion seemed rather to bring to acuter real- 
ization our chilly state than to start our 
blood to circulation. It required faith, 
faith deep and real, to force us to the 
unpacking, to the necessary search for 
fuel, to the patient labor of ignition. 

The horses wandered rather dispirit- 
edly away in search of the scanty short- 
hair grass of this altitude. After much 
chopping for the heart of the firewood, 
we managed to start a little blaze. It 
grew, and we gathered close. After a 
time we began to feel a trifle less numb. 
One of us summoned courage to explore 
among stiff and wet canvases in search 
of the grub bags and the utensils. We 
began on hot tea, and then plucked up 
96 



WE FALL BACK 

heart for the trouble of slicing bacon, and 
so on gradually to a full and satisfactory 
meal. Tuxana and Pepper huddled close 
and shivered violently in the effort to 
throw oif the chill. Pepper curled up in 
a ball; but Tuxana sat on her tail, both 
hind feet pathetically and ludicrously off 
the ground, blinking her bull-terrier pink- 
rimmed eyes. We felt recovered enough 
by now to laugh at her. 

Then slowly it became borne in on our 
now torpid faculties that something yet 
remained to be done. Not the dishes — 
no, indeed — they must wait for the morn- 
ing. But out of the cold, wet blackness 
beyond the firelight we had to conjure 
sleeping places. The task was not in it- 
self great; but it had on top of it the 
weight of a long, hard day. 

Reluctantly we lit the little candle- 
lantern and looked about. It was a case 
of hard rock that night, for every depres- 
97 



THE PASS 

sion of shale was soggy with water, and 
boughs there were none at all. So Billy 
and I spread our tarpaulin and the quilt 
to soften things a trifle, and the gray 
army blanket, and crawled in shivering. 
Poor old Tuxana, wet as a fish, begged 
hard; but the best we could do for her was 
a saddle blanket. Into this she retired 
utterly. Pepper, with the combined in- 
consequence of youth, reliance on a thick 
wire coat, and personal imbecility of dis- 
position, declined to remain covered, so 
we left her to her own devices by the 
spluttering fire. 

We shivered for awhile, then the ani- 
mal heat accumulated sufficiently beneath 
our coverings, and we fell deeply asleep. 
About two o'clock I awoke, the side of 
me next the rock f eeUng as though it were 
flattened out, like meat that has been in 
a refrigerator. My nose was as cold as 
a dog's. Overhead light clouds were hur- 
98 



WE FALL BACK 

rying by. Through them shone some very 
pale and chilly stars. 

The next morning we arose rather later 
than usual. It had cleared somewhat, but 
the air was bitterly cold. After breakfast 
we assembled about a recklessly large fire 
and discussed what was next to be done. 

The decision made — I forget what it 
was — ^we caught up the horses. Then it 
became evident that fate had taken mat- 
ters out of our hands, for Jenny's legs, by 
daylight, proved to be more cut than we 
had supposed. They had already swollen. 
We could guess without much effort that 
Jenny would be unfit to travel for at 
least ten days. So we put my riding sad- 
dle on the cripple, transferred her pack 
to Coco, and Billy to my own horse, 
Bullet. 

"I will climb the ridge again," said I, 
"and look for a route over from the other 
canon. You can make camp at the 
99 



THE PASS 

meadow where the two canons come to- 
gether, and I will join you about dark." 

They filed way, and once more I ad- 
dressed myself to the ascent. 

In climbing a mountain at a high eleva- 
tion you start out comfortably enough. 
The first symptom of trouble is a short- 
ening of your breath, the next a violent 
pounding of your heart ; then come sensa- 
tions of heavy weights attached to your 
feet, ringings of your ears, blurring of 
your eyes, perhaps a slight giddiness. It 
is now time to stop. After a moment the 
landscape steadies, the symptoms subside. 
You are ready for another little spurt. 
The moment you stop, or strike level 
ground, you are all right; but at the high- 
est elevations, even a slight incline or a 
light burden will bring you immediate 
distress. At just what elevation this dis- 
tress becomes acute depends on your in- 
dividual make-up. Some people cannot 
100 




The way was very rough. 



WE FALL BACK 

stand even six or seven thousand feet. 
Billy is fit for navigation up to about thir- 
teen thousand. Beyond that point she is 
subject to a seizure that stiffens her out 
as though by a stroke of paralysis. Snow 
on the forehead brings her around all 
right, and luckily snow is abundant that 
high. I personally have never been be- 
yond fifteen thousand feet; but that al- 
titude, though rendering rapid exertion 
extremely laborious, did not affect me 
painfully. 

An hour brought me to the snow. I 
could see very well how to get up through 
a chimney were it not for that snow. But 
in present conditions the case was abso- 
lutely hopeless. The slant was such that 
even in soft footing a horse would have 
difficulty to keep from falling, but now 
the substratum of ice made the passage 
absolutely impossible. In addition, the 
snow itself lay in sharp edges and cups 
101 



THE PASS 

several feet deep, like a gigantic muffin 
mold of innumerable hollows. One had 
either to attempt the knife edges of the 
partitions, or to climb laboriously in and 
out of the hollows. Generally the result 
turned out to be a disconcerting compro- 
mise between the two. 

However, another twenty minutes' 
hard work took me to the top. There I 
quickly traversed the T where the two 
canons headed against the ridge, and 
stood once more looking out over Dead- 
man's Canon. 

The great black masses of the Kaweah 
Group were blacker still with a formida- 
ble thunder storm slowly gathering about 
its peaks. So sinister, gloomy and for- 
bidding did the canons and crevices be- 
come as the light was blotted from their 
glittering snows and rocks that I could 
not rid myself of the notion that the very 
essence of the world was undergoing the 
102 



WE FALL BACK 

transformation of some catastrophe. It 
had started yonder, under those black 
peaks. It was spreading, as spilled water 
spreads. Shortly it would kill that broad, 
smiling sunny meadow far beneath. Then 
it would creep up the slope below. Then 
it would swallow me. 

A peal of thunder seemed to tear apart 
the stillness with the voice of a command. 
One after another the mountains echoed 
back the submissive response, as though 
reporting themselves at their posts for the 
sinister change that was to befall them. 
I thought to hear a faint and distant roar- 
ing. A gray veil suddenly shut out the 
peaks. 

This seemed to break the spell of por- 
tent. I noted that the air currents and 
the configuration of the mountains were 
likely to carry the storm eastward, and so 
set to work. 

I scouted until I found, about fifteen 
103 



THE PASS 

hundred feet down, some stunted trees 
and feed. Then I worked out a route to 
them. Then I built as much trail as was 
necessary. This took me a long time. 
Whether we should be able to do the other 
fifteen hundred feet down to the green 
meadow and the round lake did not mat- 
ter for the present. It was enough if we 
could penetrate so far into the enemy's 
country, sure of sustenance and a space 
for the soles of our feet. While engaged 
at this work I came across a big drift of 
pink snow. Pink snow is a little hard to 
believe in, but it exists. I understand that 
the tint comes from the pollen of some 
flower. The fact remains that the very 
substance of the snow is pink, decidedly 
pink, like pink cotton ; and when you step 
on it, it crushes into an appearance of pale 
blood. When I first saw it far above me, 
on the slope of a mountain, I thought I 
must have chanced on some anachronistic 
104 



WE FALL BACK 

glow that had happened around too late 
for sunrise or too early for sunset. 

By seven o'clock I had reached the 
forks of the canons. The thunder shower 
had increased to a cloud burst, and the 
cloud burst had overtaken the pack train. 
So violently had the water beaten down 
that the horses refused to proceed. They 
ran their heads into thick spruce trees and 
declined to budge. Billy and Wes had 
to sit there and take it. Billy thought it 
great fun; but, as Wes pointed out, she 
owned a poncho. Wes did not, but re- 
tained a semblance of triumphant good 
humor because by some mysterious meth- 
od of his own he had kept his tobacco and 
cigarette papers dry. 

The ground was soaked, and miniature 
gullies had worked down through the pine 
needles. We built a big fire, turned out 
the horses and so once more slept with the 
great and complex voice of the river. 
105 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 



?™;^.':*53;, 



VIII 

THE PERMANENT CAMP 

After far wandering a permanent 
camp is a great refreshment to the spirit. 

You start in animated by the utmost 
vigor. There are so many things to be 
done, and they all occur to your mind at 
once. After breakfast you seize the axe 
and take to the brush. The search for 
straight saplings forking at required 
heights becomes absorbing. You cut 
them and drag them to camp and stick 
them in their appointed places. There is 
an amplitude to these preparations in de- 
licious contrast to the direct utilitarianism 
of your camp-making while on trail. So 
must have felt the founder of Cologne 
Cathedral, his soul big and tranquil with 
109 



THE PASS 

the thought of the three hundred years of 
building that were to follow. You make 
a shelter and a bed. The former is beau- 
tiful and permanent; we put up the little 
balloon silk tent, which heretofore had 
been used only as a pack cloth. The bed 
you arrange carefully, smoothing the 
ground with the back of the axe swung 
adze-wise between your legs, laying par- 
allel two generous lengths of logs well 
pegged to prevent rolling, filling between 
them first with dry pine needles, then with 
balsam fans thatched carefully springy 
side up. It is fun to cut balsam. The 
thicket is warm with the radiation of sun 
.-^''% from fragrant piney things. You clip 
and clip away with the hatchet, bathed 
in tepid odors and buzzy sounds. It is 
>«i^-^ a leisurely occupation that you cannot 

hurry, and so you lapse gladly into that 
half -dreamy state to be acquired only in 

the woods, wherein the golden afternoon 
110 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

seems to comprise several eternities. Then 
you return to camp, and begin feverishly; 
the construction of a table. 

It is a very ingenious table, supported 
by three saplings suspended between two 
trees. Across them you lay wands, and 
over the wands you spread your oilcloth. 
The bench you make of hewn logs (be 
sure they are dry, otherwise you may stick 
to your seat), supported on cross-pieces 
between forked branches driven into the 
ground. You place your eating utensils, 
and feel the creator's joy. 

Then remain a dozen other affairs. The 
jBreplace is elaborate ; the saddles are con- J 

ceded a rack. And you make a woodpile. |\^ 

Ordinarily, while traveling, you cook 
with what you can pick up, or chop in 
two by a stroke or so of the axe. Now 
you cut the nearest pine logs into lengths, 
and lug these lengths into camp on your 
shoulders, staggering uncertainly. Ajid 



"^ 



THE PASS 

then you hit with your axe a mighty 
whack lengthwise, and insert a wedge 
of hard wood in the crack thus made, 
and beat the wedge in until it is buried, 
and then insert another wedge lower 
down, until at last the log spUts in two 
with a great tearing of wood fibers. 
Whereupon you attack the halves in hke 
manner, and then the quarters, until in 
the final result you are possessed of a 
number of slender split posts. You lay 
one of these posts over your chopping log. 
A full swing of the axe bites deep and 
slanting. You reverse the blade and 
whack mightily on the end. The slender 
post breaks at the point of the axe cut, 
and at last you lay aside with pride the 
first stick of firewood. 

There is a joy in the clean, accurate 
labor — a pleasure in stretching your mus- 
cles. And the gleaming yellow piles 
grow almost like magic. 
112 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

By now you are fully in the vein. You 
are tired ; but you do not know enough to 
feel so. A score of desirable little tasks 
crowd on your intention. You will put 
up shelves, and make a meat safe, and 
sweep the forest floor, and dig a garbage 
pit, and rope in the camp, and 

"Look here!" complains your com- 
panion, ''don't you think we'd better call 
this a day? I'm hungry 1" 

You glance up with surprise. The 
pines are silhouetting against the west. 
Shadows are half -tree high abeady, and 
the coolness of evening is creeping very 
cautiously, very slowly down through the 
lowest thickets. The sparrows and viros 
seem to have fallen silent. A pensive 
melody of thrushes steals in and out of 
the forest aisles. 

You straighten your back, and sud- 
denly feel very tired. The day is indeed 

done. 

113 



THE PASS 

And next morning very early you 
awaken and look straight up at the sky. 
The pine tops touch it shyly — you could 
almost imagine that gently swaying in 
the wind they had brushed the stars away. 
A great singing of birds fills the air. So 
innumerable are the performers that it is 
difficult to distinguish the individuals. 
The result might be called a tremendous 
and composite chattering. Only here the 
tone of the chattering is supremely mu- 
sical, so that the forest seems to be echoing 
to the voice of some single melodious 
creature. 

Near by a squirrel, like a fussy little old 
gentleman, jerks about nervously. 

**Dear, dear!" says he. "Look at those 
people! Look at those people!" 

After he has repeated this a few score 
of times he fusses away, probably to re- 
port to the proper officers that he must 
object, he really must object to such per- 
114 



'?IH^ 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

sons being admitted to his club. The sun 
strikes through the woods and glorifies a 
dogwood just to the left of its direct line 
of illumination. The light partly reflects 
from, partly shines through the delicate 
leaves, until the whole bush becomes 
ethereal, a gently glowing soul of itself. 
You stretch luxuriously, and extend your 
legs, and an unwonted feeling of satisfac- 
tion steals over you. You wonder why. 
The reason comes in due time. It is this : 
a whole glorious woodland day lies before 
you, and in it is no question of pack rope, 
horse or trail. You can do just exactly 
as much or as little as you please. 

Probably you elect to putter around 
camp. There are innumerable things to 
do, and you can have fun at any one of 
them. To sit straddle a log, tinkering 
away at a new latigo for your saddle is 
joy, especially if you can look up every 
now and then to a very blue sky not 
115 



THE PASS 

much beyond very tall trees. Little items 
of repair have long been awaiting this 
leisure. Also there is laundry, with a glo- 
rious chance to wash everything washable, 
even down to the long-suffering dish rag. 
I should advise one of the cold-water 
soaps, as it is difficult to scare up anything 
big enough to boil clothes in. 

And if you are fond of cooking, now 
is your chance to indulge in the most as- 
tounding culinary orgies. Simple pud- 
dings, cakes, and other bakings are quite 
within the reach of the ingenious camp 
cook: there is necessary only the widest 
possible interpretation of receipts, and the 
completest audacity in substitution. If 
you have no eggs, why, never mind. Per- 
haps dried prunes will do. Try it, any- 
way. I once made a very good pudding 
out of the remains of boiled macaroni, 
some cold cornmeal mush, sugar, cinna- 
mon and raisins. This when baked 
116 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

through, and well browned atop proved 
to be marvelously popular. I admit it 
does not sound very good. 

The cooking zeal is cumulative. There 
comes a day when you cook from morn- 
ing until evening, and then triumphantly 
announce a feast. If you possess real en- 
thusiasm, you get up menus and table 
decorations. Here is one we gave at Lake 
Charlotte, eleven thousand feet up, in 
honor of the birthday of our old friend 
Spoopendyke. Your true celebrant in the 
woods always makes his feast an occasion, 
even if he has to invent one. 

Clam Soup a la Dieu Salt Quoi 
Fried Trout a la Lac Charlotte 

Bacon a VAxlegrease 
Scrambled Eggs a la Tin Can 

Bread Corn Bread Biscuits 

Vegetables a VAbercrombie 

Boiled Potatoes Baked Beans 

Rice Pudding Strawberries Spice Cake 

Nuts Raisins 

117 





THE PASS 


On the reverse came the 




Wine List 


Tea . 


In the Large Pot 


Coffee 


In the Small Pot 


Cocoa . 


. Make it Yourself, Darn You 


Water 


Go to the Spring 


Lemonade 


In the Small Bottle 


Whiskey . 


. Drink, $10; Smell, 25c. 



Cigars Pipes Cigarettes 

After a brilliant climax of this sort, 
you generally settle back to a more lei- 
surely gait. Other things engage your 
attention. You hunt, you fish, you ex- 
plore the inmiediately surrounding coun- 
try. 

And then little by little you run down, 
like a clock that has not been wound. 
There is plenty of venison in camp; fish- 
ing palls. You lie around during endless 
golden hours, shifting with the sun, 
watching the rainbow colors in your eye- 
lashes, soaking in comfort and rest as 
thirsty ground takes up water. In the 
118 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

evening you swap yarns and hold aca- 
demic discussions around the campfire. 
If it were not for the fact that you have 
to chop wood for that campfire you could 
take root and your brains would turn out 
budding little green branches. The aca- 
demic discussions are lazily delivered, and 
irresponsible, oh, utterly irresponsible! 
The ordinary rules of coherency and 
probability are quite relaxed. You hear 
the most extraordinary stories, and still 
more extraordinary theories. 

"I remember when I was foreman of a 
construction gang in the mountains north 
of here, the company used to buy con- 
demned army supplies. For awhile they 
ran short of lubricating oil, so they used 
to pack the axle boxes of the cars with 
slices of salt pork; it worked fine. 

"Well, I used to pride myself on run- 
ning a mighty nifty camp, then, and I 

had a Chink that could put up a real feed. 
119 



THE PASS 

One day old Harrington himself dropped 
off on me with some of his city friends, so 
as soon as I could break away I hiked 
over to the cook shack. 

" *Sing Hop,' says I, 'old man come. 
Rustle plenty good chop, poco pronto.' 

" *No hab got meat,' says Sing Hop. 
*Him no come.' 

"Well, that looked bad for the reputa- 
tion of my camp, now didn't it? Then 
an idea came to me. I sneaked around the 
other side of the train, opened one of the 
axle boxes and took out a dozen slices of 
the condemned pork they had packed in 
there for lubricating. Old Harrington 
said he'd never eaten better meat." 

You exclaim, politely, a little doubt- 
fully. The old sinner presses down the 
tobacco in his pipe and cocks his eye at 
you. 

"The joke of it was," says he, "that 
Sing Hop never had to touch that meat. 
120 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

The friction-heat of the axles had cooked 
it just right." 

"You'll never go to heaven," murmurs 
some one, kicking the fire. A column of 
sparks startles the shadows into momen- 
tary flight. 

"Speaking of heaven," continues the 
sinner cheerfully, "did you ever hear of 
the two old Arizonians who met for the 
first time in ten years? Of course, they 
had to celebrate. By and by they got to 
the tearful stage of the game, and began 
to mourn the absence of Jim. Jim had 
been dead fifteen years. That didn't 
make any difference, however. 

" 'It jes' spoils thish evenin' that Jim 
ain't yere,' sobbed one. *How dear oY 
Jim would have enjoyed this evenin'T " 

They mourned awhile in hopeless 
gloom, and then one saw a little glimmer 
of light in the situation. 

" 'Nev' mind!' said he, brightening up, 
121 



THE PASS 

Vhen I die an' go to heaven, I'll tell dear 
or Jim about thish evenin'!' 

" *Yes,' said the other earnestly, 'but 
s'pose dear ol' Jim didn't go to heaven?' 

" 'Then,' replied the first quite un- 
alarmed, 'then you tell himl' " 

Every one smokes and stares into the 
heart of the fire. A glowing log crumples 
at the middle, and sinks to coals. The 
flames die to blues and lucent pale-greens. 
In the partial re-establishment of dark- 
ness the stars look down between the trees. 

"I wonder," says some one, dreamily, 
"what will be the first message flashed 
from those other worlds when at last com- 
munication is established; what bit of in- 
formation out of all our boundless curi- 
osity we will ask for? Will we hit for the 
fundamentals? Will we inquire, *Do you 
die, up there? do you hope? do you fear? 
do you love?' " 

"Probably some trust will get hold of 
122 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

it, and the first message will be: *Use 
Broggins' Tongue Titillators, the best 
Bon-Bon,' " replied the brutal member. 

"Well, after all, it won't matter," in- 
sists the idealist unabashed. "The impor- 
tant thing will not be the message, but the 
fact that it is the first message." 

A tentative chilly Uttle night wind ven- 
tures across the dying fire. The incan- 
descent coals, with their halls and gal- 
leries magnificent, sink together with a 
faint sound. In a moment they begin to 
film over. The features of your com- 
panions grow indistinct. Outside noises 
come more clearly to your attention, for 
strangely enough the mere fact of fire- 
light seems to hold at a distance not only 
the darkness but the sounds that people it. 
The rush of waters, the sighing of winds, 
the distant mournful owl-notes, or sleepy 
single chirp of some momentarily awak- 
ened day-bird — these come closer with the 
133 



THE PASS 

reassured shadows creeping down to 
pounce on the dying fire. 

In the group some one raps a pipe 
sharply twice. Some one else stretches 
and sighs. The stir of leaves tells of re- 
luctant risings. 

"Time to turn in, boys; good-night," 
says one. 

In a moment you and the faint glow in 
the ashes are left alone together. 

We made a good camp under tall trees. 
Then we produced the flour sack contain- 
ing our much-read "library"; destroyed 
arrears in the laundry business; shaved 
elaborately, and so prepared ourselves for 
a good time. 

First of all we were hungry for fresh 
meat, so Wes and I rode down the river 
to get a deer. We tied the horses at the 
edge of the snow-brush, made our way la- 
boriously up to the castellated tops of the 
ridges where the bucks lie to harden their 
124 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

antlers, and crept along, slowly looking 
with all our eyes. The early morning was 
too much of an effort after our hard work 
of the past few weeks, so now the time 
was late afternoon. In the before-even- 
ing coolness our game should be afoot, 
stepping daintily in and out among the 
manzanita and snow-brush, nipping a 
mouthful here and there, pausing at every 
step or so to look watchfully about over 
the landscape. Pepper and Tuxana, 
chipmunks scornfully forgotten, trailed 
along at our heels. They understood per- 
fectly that important affairs were for- 
ward, and stepped with almost the over- 
elaborate caution of a schoolboy on the 
stalk for imaginary Indians. 

The signs were numerous. Tracks 
crossed and recrossed the ridge, all of 
them round and full buck-tracks. The 
more pointed doe footprints would be 
found at a lower elevation, where, in the 
125 



THE PASS 

shelter of denser growth, they would be 
taking care of their fawns. After an 
hour Wes, who for the moment was in 
the lead, stopped short and began cau- 
tiously to level his rifle. I stepped to one 
side and looked. About a hundred yards 
away, above the brush, I could just make 
out two spike horns and a pair of ears 
pointed inquiringly in our direction. The 
horns looked not unlike the branches of 
dead manzanita, and the ears blended with 
the foliage in that strange semi-transpar- 
ent manner possessed alike by wild crea- 
tures and woodland shadows. Tuxana 
and Pepper quivered. A tense stillness 
seemed all at once to grip fast the uni- 
verse, a stillness which would require a 
mighty effort to break. 

"Bang!" spoke old Meat-in-the-Pot. 

A swift compact cloud of dust immedi- 
ately sprang up from the spot where the 
deer had stood. A thousand echoes rever- 
126 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

berated from cliff to forest and back 
again. The necessity for caution, for 
silence, for slow and deliberate motion 
seemed instantaneously to have broken 
into these flying fragments of sound. I 
sprang to the top of a boulder, Pepper 
uttered a single excited yap, Wes spoke 
aloud. 

"Missed, by thunder!" said he. 

In the tones of Wes' voice was deep 
disgust. Wes is an excellent rifle shot, 
and rarely idisses. 

I could see the bushes swing with the 
deer's progress down hill, and occasion- 
ally I caught a momentary glimpse of his 
high, springing jumps. Evidently he in- 
tended half circling the hill. Almost 
could I get enough of a sight to shoot, 
and the expectation constantly recurring, 
and as constantly frustrated, set me in an 
agony of desire to take the cause of events 
into my own hands, to shift and adjust 
127 



THE PASS 

them and order them. Wes, screened in 
by thick brush, was grumbling away be- 
hind me. 

"He was lying down," he growled, 
"and I under shot. He was lying down; 
if I'd had any sense at all, I could 'a seen 
that with my mouth 1" 

Unexpectedly matters adjusted them- 
selves. The deer, abandoning his first in- 
tention, turned sharp to the right through 
an open space. I tried to aim so that the 
bullet would catch him as he struck the 
ground at the finish of one of his buck 
jumps — really the only way to hit a run- 
ning deer. At the shot he went down in 
a cloud of dust. 

"IgothimriyeUed. 

But the deer seemed only momentarily 
stunned, for he was almost instantly 
afoot, and off again with apparently as 
much vigor as ever. Afterward we found 
that my bullet had gone through the 
128 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

shoulder without either breaking the bone 
or entering the body cavity. 

At this point Tuxana appeared, made 
a flying leap at the deer's throat; missed, 
but tried the next best that offered it- 
self. In this case the next best happened 
to be the deer's tail. That she did not 
miss. 

It was much better than gunny sacks. 
I do not doubt that in the brief moment 
during which Tuxana remained on terra 
firma, and while her mental processes 
were still unconfused, a great illumina- 
tion came to her of many things hereto- 
fore mysterious — of the reason for gunny 
sacks, and why dogs delight to swing 
from them, and how they are intended in 
the scheme of things as a training and a 
preparation for such crises of life as this. 
And so Tuxana sailed away, hitting the 
scenery on an average of once every hun- 
dred feet. The last I saw of her for that 
129 



THE PASS 

moment was as the deer jumped a log. 
Her four feet were rigidly extended in 
four different directions, uncertain as to 
which one would alight first, and how. 
And in her soul I knew there was deep 

joy- 

We followed the trail for a quarter of 
a mile. Then we came to a stream flow- 
ing among boulders. In the middle of 
the stream and half over a miniature fall 
lay the deer. Firmly attached to its tail 
was Tuxana, the bull dog, her sturdy legs 
braced back to hold the great weight 
against the current, her jaws clamped, 
the water pouring over her flanks. When 
we approached she rolled her little pink- 
rimmed eyes at us. In them we read sat- 
isfaction with the condition of affairs. 
She gave no other sign. 

We put a bullet through the deer's 
head, hauled him — and Tuxana — ashore, 
and set about the job of preparing him 
130 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

for transportation. Tuxana let go with 
reluctance. It was the culminating mo- 
ment of her emotional existence. She 
held herself ready to give any further as- 
sistance that might be needed. 

The mountain deer is not large, and 
this was only a spike buck. We cleaned 
him, cut oiF his head and hocks, and tied 
each hind leg to its opposite foreleg. 
Thus he resembled a rather bulky knap- 
sack, with loops through which to thrust 
the arms. We fed the "lights" to the 
appreciative dogs, and then carried the 
venison to the horses. 

The meat supply thus assured, we felt 
privileged to loaf a bit. About four of 
the afternoon we used to start out fishing. 
Roaring River is not particularly well 
stocked, but we could get a mess, and it 
was extremely pleasant to make our way 
through the thickets, over and around the 
rocky points where the bluif s came down, 
131 



THE PASS 

to the one little spot where the rushing 
white water paused behind the boulder. 
Trout fishing anywhere is one of the best 
of sports. Trout fishing in the mountains 
is superlative. The forest trees, the sheets 
of granite, the rush and boil of the water, 
the innumerable busy bird voices, the cool 
high air, all seem to fill the immediate 
world with movement and bustle; yet you 
have but to raise your eyes to be calmed by 
the great snow peaks lying serene beneath 
the intense blue skies of the higher alti- 
tudes. And then quite early in the after- 
noon the shadows begin to climb the 
easterly wall; and as they do so the 
upper peaks become ethereal, until at 
the last, after your own little world has 
fallen to twilight, they glow and palpi- 
tate with a pulsating soap-bubble irides- 
cence. 

One day it happened that we killed two 
rattlesnakes, which was quite extraordi- 
133 




^-^■'^y^'h 



I'h. ,:.-.// 



tit with the rattlesnake 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

nary so high in the mountains. The 
campfire talk that evening centered on 
the reptiles. We swapped the usual yarns 
and experiences; indulged in the custom- 
ary argument as to remedies. Wes told 
of the chicken which when killed, split, 
and tied fresh to the wound clung there 
valiantly for two hours, and then, "black 
as your hat, sir!" fell off of its own ac- 
cord. Billy and I agreed that this was 
marvelous. Wes likewise gave as his dis- 
illusioned opinion that whiskey is not effi- 
cacious. Why? Well, he knew of a man 
who, while very drunk, was bitten, and 
who forthwith died. And, of course, in 
this case the whiskey had a head start on 
the poison. 

"Wes," said I, "did you ever know, in 
your experience, of a man dying from 
snake bite?" 

"Oh, yes," said he. 

"Tell me about it." 
133 



THE PASS 

"Well," he began, "a friend of Jim 
Brown's, down in Tulare County, was bit, 
and Jim told me " 

And that is about the usual answer to 
such question. During a fairly extended 
experience in snake countries I have made 
it a point to proffer that inquiry, and 
up to date I have found just three men 
in whose veracity I had confidence who 
claim to have seen a man dead of snake 
bite. Hundreds could prove cases by the 
next fellow ; and I have no doubt that the 
pubhcation of this will bring forth many 
scornful expostulants who have seen 
whole cohorts succumb. But such have 
been the results of my own careful and 
extended interrogations. 

This does not mean that the rattlesnake 
does not inflict a fatal bite; but merely 
that the chances of such a bite, even in a 
snake country, are exceedingly small. The 
reptile usually begins to rattle before you 
134 






THE PERMANENT CAMP 

are within ten yards of him, and is always 
more anxious to retreat than to court 
trouble. When he does not rattle, the 
chances are that he is too torpid, either 
from cold or feeding, to strike at all. 
Even if trodden on at such a time, his 
stroke is apt to be feeble and slow. An- 
other element of safety resides in the fact 
that leather or even thick clothing will 
generally wipe the venom back along the 
grooved fang, so that even if the skin is 
actually broken, the probabilities of in- 
fection are small. At such a juncture the 
supposed victim twines himself around 
the whiskey jug, and passes away in an 
attack of delirium tremens. Add to these 
considerations even the ordinary precau- 
tion of a sharp lookout and an occasional 
stone rolled ahead into especially snaky- 
looking places, and your risk is not worth 
mentioning. 

As I have said, the rattlesnake's main 
135 



THE PASS 

desire is to be let alone. I have killed hun- 
dreds, and I never knew but one case of 
the snake's taking the aggressive — in the 
sense of coming forth to attack. This was 
a large diamond-back that had twined 
himself about the roots of a manzanita. 
We wanted his skin, and so had spent 
some time poking at him with a stick, try- 
ing to get his head into such a position 
that a shot at it would not injure his body. 
Evidently he got tired of this, for after 
a few moments he uncoiled, came out 
from his shelter, and advanced on one of 
us. His mouth was opened wide, like the 
snakes on the circus posters, his head was 
erect, and he had every appearance of de- 
termination. He advanced straight to- 
ward the Tenderfoot, rattling vigorously. 
That individual promptly stepped aside, 
whereupon the snake Ukewise changed his 
course. This was repeated several times, 
so that we could have no doubt that he was 
136 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

actually on the aggressive, was actually 
trying to get at our friend. 

Three fallacies on this subject I have 
often seen printed. One is that a snake 
cannot rattle unless coiled. He can. I 
have often seen them moving rapidly 
aci'oss the trail, head and tail both up, buz- 
zing away like an alarm clock. The second 
fallacy is that he cannot strike unless 
coiled. He can. I admit that the zone 
of danger is somewhat more contracted, 
but it exists. The third is that he never 
can strike more than half his own length. 
This last is ordinarily true, but it is an 
unsafe rule to rely on. Once in a deep, hot 
canon I dismounted to kill a rather small 
rattler coiled against a rock. I selected 
what seemed to me to be a long enough 
pole, made one hit — and was missed by 
just about six inches! Now I stood at 
least five feet from that snake, and he 
was not over thirty inches long. From 
137 



THE PASS 

him to me was slightly down hill; but the 
especial point was that the reptile had by 
the merest chance happened to get a pur- 
chase for his spring from the rock against 
which he was coiled. That was abnormal, 
of course, but it wouldn't have helped me 
any if he had landed. 

The best way is to give them a wide 
berth. If you have a rifle and enough am- 
munition, just point the muzzle in his 
direction, hold steady for a moment, and 
pull the trigger. You will get his head 
every time. He will do all the necessary 
aiming himself, as his instinct is to thrust 
his head directly toward the nearest dan- 
gerous object. If, however, you have no 
rifle ammunition to throw away, then use 
your six-shooter. Only in this event you 
will have to be your own marksman. 

It is astonishing how instantaneously 

the human nerves react to the shrill buzz. 

A man who has never heard it before, rec- 
138 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

ognizes it at once. And the moment the 
sound vibration strikes his ear-drum — 
long before it has had a chance of inter- 
pretation by the brain — ^his muscles have 
accomplished for him a record-breaking 
broad jump. 

Late one evening in the southern part 
of the mountains Wes and I were return- 
ing to camp after an unsuccessful deer 
hunt. Our way led down a steep slope 
covered with pine needles. We swung 
along rapidly, six feet at a stride. Sud- 
denly I noticed just about two yards ahead 
of Wes, who was preceding me, a rattle- 
snake crossing our way. My companion's 
next step would bring him fairly atop the 
reptile. I yelled, and at the same instant 
Wes must have seen his danger. His 
stride did not alter its rhythm, nor did he 
appear to put forth the least increase of 
muscular effort. But he fairly sailed into 
space. 

139 



THE PASS 

Wes told me another yarn of how he 
and a young fellow, occupying overnight 
a rangers' cabin, nearly got into serious 
trouble. 

"I was sitting on a bench," said Wes, 
"and the Kid was lying on the bunk read- 
ing, his head on one hand. I looked up, 
and nearly froze stiff when I saw a snake 
coiled right under his armpit, in the hol- 
low of his arm. I knew if I said anything 
the Kid would move, and that would be 
about all. And, of course, I couldn't do 
nothin'. The snake was too close to his 
body for me to shoot. So I sat there 
figurin' away to myself; and I guess I 
must have prayed that was an interest- 
ing book. Anyway, finally I sneaked 
over, and I reached out, and I got that 
Kid by the wrist he was leaning his head 
on, and I give him one good yank! 
I reckon I was so scared I overdid the 
matter, for that Kid hit so hard against 
140 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

the other wall that it mighty nigh killed 
him." 

Wes weighs about two hundred and is 
strong as a horse. I did not envy the 
Kid's predicament either before or after 
the discovery of the snake. 

We told these and other tales about the 
campfire. That night Billy, too, had her 
experience with snakes. 

When Billy retires for slumber she 
wears a sort of blanket robe with a peaked 
hood, which she pulls up over her head. 
About two in the morning she awoke with 
a start, thoroughly convinced that some- 
thing was wrong. After a moment her 
faculties adjusted themselves, and she 
turned cold about the heart as she realized 
that a snake had crawled into the blanket, 
and was coiled between her head and the 
hood. 

She did not know what to do. If she 
moved, even to awaken me, the snake dis- 
141 



THE PASS 

turbed in the warm comfort for the sake 
of which he had made his invasion, would 
probably strike. The minutes dragged 
by in an agony. Finally, Billy reasoned 
that she was doomed to be bitten anyway, 
and that a bite in the hand was preferable 
to one in the head, so with a degree of 
very real courage she softly inserted her 
hand in the hood, poised it over what felt 
to be the thickest coil, pounced suddenly 
— and nearly yanked herself out of bed 
by the braid of her hair! * 



* Since writing the above Pepper has been bitten by a 
rattlesnake. The reptile struck her just back of the ankle 
joint. Almost immediately the whole leg and shoulder 
swelled enormously and became exceedingly painful. I 
carried her over my saddle for some miles and then went 
into camp for several days in order to give her a chance of 
recovery. The poor pup had a mighty sick time of it. 
The leg and foot were puffed out and as stiff as a club. 
Of course she could bear no weight on it — in fact the 
lightest touch to the ground caused her to cry dolefully. 
At night she sometimes took an hour to lie down. The 
swelling ran down the left side of her chest in a great welt. 
At the end of two days the symptoms began to subside with 
marvelous quickness. By the morning of the third she was 
as well as ever, and followed me afoot over Shuteye Pass. 

142 



THE PERMANENT CAMP 

A week slipped by before we knew it. 
The only incidents were occasional noon 
thunder storms, and the sight of a bear. 
This I saw, but as a fishing rod was my 
deadliest possession, I did not get him. A 
consequent hunt resulted in a yearling 
cub, which made good meat, but was not 
otherwise interesting. 

At the end of the week we realized that 
Jenny's legs would not much longer serve 
as an excuse. So we prepared for our 
monthly job of shoeing the animals. 

If I were the only blacksmith in the 
world I would charge fifty dollars for 
shoeing a horse. It is the most back- 
breaking, tiresome job I know of. We 
carried the malleable "Goodenough" shoe, 
which could be fashioned cold; but even 
with that advantage each animal seemed 
to develop enough feet to furnish out a 
centipede. Calamity Jane appeared to 
look on us as a rest cure. Whenever we 
143 



s^ 



THE PASS 

got a foot of hers off ground, she 
promptly leaned her entire weight on that 
leg, so we slung her up. Dinkey, with 
customary maliciousness, tried every mis- 
chievous trick to bother us ; but we settled 
her promptly by throwing and hog-tying. 
To add to our troubles the punch broke. 
We had no forge, of course, so we were 
under the necessity of burying it until red 
in the hottest fire we could make of cones 
and pitchpine, beating it with a hatchet, 
and tempering it as best we could in bacon 
grease. After three attempts we made 
it serviceable and went ahead. But we 
were mighty glad when the last nail was 
driven. 

There is a finality about the abandon- 
ment of a permanent camp to be experi- 
enced in no other household removal. 
You have made this home in the wilder- 
, ness and even the short period of your 
residence has given it an individuality. 
"^*V^<;. 144 









THE PERMANENT CAMP 

Now you leave it, and you are absolutely 
certain that this particular abiding place 
you will never see again. The moment 
your back is turned, the forest begins her 
task of resolving it to its original ele- 
ments. Chipmunks and squirrels and lit- 
tle birds make away quickly with the 
debris. The trees sift down the forest 
litter. Already beneath the soil are ger- 
minating seeds which shall spring up to 
cover the place where your bed had lain, 
and the very ashes of your campfires are 
fertilizing them. Next year you may re- 
turn to this identical spot. But you will 
not resume your place in your old camp. 
A new camp is to be made from new ma- 
terials amid new surroundings. The old 
has vanished forever as completely as the 
smoke of the fires that used to eddy down 
through the trees. 

So when the time came, we packed our 
animals and hit the trail eagerly enough, 
145 



THE PASS 

it is true, for we were well rested; but a 
little regretfully, also. The camp by 
Roaring River had been a good camp. 
We had enjoyed it. And though we 
knew the voice of the waters would con- 
tinue to call through the forest, we knew 
also that in all probability it would not 
call to us again. 



clo 



146 



^^^^ 



-^:sj^ 



THE SIDE HILL CAMP 



IX 

THE SIDE HILL CAMP 

The horses, too, hated to make a start. 
Dinkey, in especial, uttered the most 
heart-rending moans and groans as we 
cinched her up. And as for Calamity- 
Jane, her long ears missed support en- 
tirely, and hung as the force of gravity 
directed. / 

Tuxana and Pepper, however, were^e- 
lighted. They had long since terrorized 
all the chipmunks and Douglas squirrels 
and ground bears of the immediate vicin- 
ity. When we whistled "boots and sad- 
dles," as was our custom, all fell in line 
obediently enough, but the two dogs 
fairly frisked. 

For several hours we wound leisurely 
149 



THE PASS 

up the defiles of Deadman's Canon, as- 
cending the bits of steep trails up the 
terraces, crossing the knee-deep meadows 
between them, admiring the straight lofty- 
cliffs on either hand, with their tiny fringe 
of pine trees on top inconceivably re- 
mote, their jutting crags, like monstrous 
gargoyles overlooking an abyss, and 
their smooth sheer sweeps in syncline of 
glacier-polished granite. At the foot of 
these cliffs were steep slopes of rock 
debris, thrown down by the action of frost 
and sun. Among them had sprouted 
hardy bushes, affording a cover in which 
we looked in vain for a possible bear. The 
canon bottom contained meadows, and 
strips of Cottonwood and quaking asp, as 
well as scattered junipers and cedars. A 
beautiful stream, the west fork of Roar- 
ing River, dropped from one clear pool 
to another, or meandered between clean- 
cut banks of sod. 

150 










m^-^ 




%> 




n 



A treacherous snow field. 



THE SIDE HILL CAMP 

A number of ground bear lived in the 
rocks. These are animals of the wood- 
chuck family, about thirty or forty 
pounds in weight, possessed of an impu- 
dent spirit and beautiful long fur. As 
they amble over the boulders, they look 
to be much larger than they are. Their 
chief delight was to stand directly over an 
impregnable hiding place, and then to 
utter insults in a shrill, clear voice, which 
has earned them farther north the name 
of siffleur. At once the dogs, quivering 
with eagerness, would dash away. Louder 
and louder sounded the stream of vitu- 
peration. And then, at the very latest 
moment, the ground bear would quietly 
disappear. Pepper and Tuxana would 
butt their noses against the very unyield- 
ing spot where he had been. At the same 
instant his first cousin, residing some hun- 
dreds of feet distant, would begin to men- 
tion to Pepper the ridiculousness of her 
151 



THE PASS 

fuzzy bobtail, and to Tuxana the impres- 
sion produced by her small pink-rimmed 
eyes, whereupon the dogs would scramble 
away after this new enemy. It must have 
been very hard on their nervous systems, 
and I have no doubt that the ground 
bears, who are very wise and cynical in 
appearance, counted on these tactics to 
reduce their pursuers to an early imbe- 
cihty. Late in the day, however, we 
avenged our own animals by shooting a 
ground bear. His carcass we used for 
dog meat, which we lacked ; his tallow we 
employed for boot grease, of which we 
stood much in need; and his fur we gave 
to Billy, who admired it. Thus his end 
was fitting. 

We camped that night in the very last 
grove at the timber line. Next morning 
we were afoot literally by daylight, and 
it was very cold. The old trail to the 
prospect holes part way up the mountains 
152 



THE SIDE HILL CAMP 

we found steep and difficult, but not dan- 
gerous. By ten we had reached, at the 
same point, its end, and the beginning of 
the snow. 

Here we discovered that Modesto had 
cast a shoe — one of his nice new ones that 
we thought we had nailed on fast. Noth- 
ing remained but to unpack Old Slob, 
who carried the repair kits, and to under- 
take the job then and there. Wes volun- 
teered, and while he was at it, we looked 
about us with some curiosity. 

The miners had laboriously leveled in 
the granite debris two platforms for two 
tents. The remains of a rough forge 
stood near at hand. Beneath a stone still 
lingered, undissolved by the elements, the 
remains of a pack of cards. Two or three 
sticks of stove wood had escaped burning. 

Now what do you suppose such men 
expect to make out of a dubious copper 
prospect in such a location? In the first 
153 



THE PASS 

place, every pound of supplies would have 
to be packed from Millwood, heaven 
knows how many miles away or over how 
many mountains, and every pound of ore 
would have to be packed out. In the 
second place, it was now well on in Au- 
gust, yet the snows had barely receded. 
Two months of work a year at most are all 
a man can hope for at such an elevation. 
And to cap the apparent absurdity, the 
mineral to be mined is not one of the 
precious metals. 

I know of half a dozen such proposi- 
tions in the length of the Sierras. And 
often I have seen their owners going in 
to the properties, old, white-bearded men 
for the most part, with jolly, twinkling 
eyes and a fund of anecdotes. Inquiry 
brings out that they are from Stockton or 
Sacramento or Fresno or some other val- 
ley town, and that they have been coming 
into the mountains for an incredible num- 
154 



THE SIDE HILL CAMP 

ber of years. When you speak to them of 
their mines, they always look mysterious, 
as though there were things of which they 
could not talk — yet. My theory is that 
these ancients are jolly and lovable old 
frauds. They live respectably in their 
valley towns all winter, attending to their 
business and their pew rent and their 
social duties as staid and proper citizens. 
But when summer comes, the old moun- 
taineering blood begins to stir in them. 
They are ashamed frankly to follow their 
inclination. How would it look! What 
an example for the young men! Deacon 
Brown has got tired of work, so he's go- 
ing out to be a hobo! And imagine the 
enormity in the eyes of an industrious 
neighborhood of a two or three months' 
vacation. So these delightful old hypo- 
crites invent the legend of vast interests 
'way up where the snow lies; and year 
after year they sneak back to haunts 
155 



THE PASS 

jflavored by long associations, where they 
do a little pick and drill work — for a man 
must save his own self-respect, and, be- 
sides, the game is interesting — and shoot 
a deer or so, and smoke a lot of strong, 
rank tobacco, and concoct wonderful 
things with onions in a covered and for- 
midable frying pan, and just have a good 
time. They are engaging conspirators, 
and I advise you never to pass by one of 
their camps. 

By this time Wes had finished his 
job. We repacked and continued on our 
way. 

Thanks to my careful scouting of ten 
days before, we had no trouble at all in 
reaching the "saddle." At noon we 
called a halt there, ate our lunch, built a 
huge pile of rocks as a monument and 
congratulated ourselves that the worst 
was over. You see, we still clung to the 
Ranger's statement that once at the top 
156 



THE SIDE HILL CAMP 

we would have no difficulty with the other 
side. Already we began to plan how we 
would camp at the lower border of the 
round meadow in the rock-bound canon 
below us; how next day we would go on 
to Redwood Meadow, and by the 26th be 
at Kern Lake, and so on. This is a fatal 
practice. Just as soon as you begin to 
make up your mind that you will catch 
some trout, or do the washing, or some- 
thing of that sort before supper, the trail 
is sure to lose itself, or develop unex- 
pected difficulties, so that at the end you 
must cook by firelight. An inch on the 
map is a mighty deceiving thing. 

In the meantime, however, having fin- 
ished our hardtack and raisins, we poured 
about two spoonfuls of whiskey over a 
cupful of snow, and solemnly christened 
this place Elizabeth Pass, after Billy.* 

* See S. E. comer of the Tehipite Quadrangle, U. S. 
Survey. 

157 



_.<*»3^ 



THE PASS 

It proved to be a little over twelve thou- 
sand feet in elevation. Although we ex- 
perienced some difficulty and consumed 
some little time in getting over, the delay 
was because of the necessity of looking 
out the best route. Subsequent travelers, 
by following our monimients, and the 
field notes given in the appendix, should 
have no difficulty, except at one place on 
the ledge, of getting through. Of the 
ledge, more hereafter. The route should 
prove a good short-cut between the south 
fork of the King's River and the head- 
waters of the Kaweah. 

We cached a screw-top can in the mon- 
ument. It contained a brief statement 
of names and dates, named the pass, and 
claimed for Billy the honor of being the 
first woman to traverse it. Then we took 
a last look on the tumult of mountains to 
the north, and addressed ourselves to the 
task of following, as far as it led, the 
158 



THE SIDE HILL CAMP 

piece of trail I had constructed ten days 
before. 

The descent for a thousand feet was 
ahnost suspiciously easy. We slid down 
a rather steep and stony ridge at right 
angles to the main system, turned sharp 
to the left across its shoulder, and so 
gained a shallow ravine. All this was 
over shale, stones, and angular rocks the 
size of your head, not to speak of half 
sunken ledges, down which the horses 
had to slide or jump. But for all that, 
the going, as granite country runs, was 
neither dangerous nor too difficult, and 
we congratulated ourselves that at this 
rate we would be able to test the coldness 
of the waters in the lake before even the 
early mountain sunset. 

Up to the time we gained the head of 
the ravine we had traveled over imcom- 
promising rock — and nothing else. Here, 
however, we waded at once knee deep into 

169 



THE PASS 

full-blossomed blue lupins. They filled 
the depression between the lateral ridges, 
and flung themselves far up the slopes, 
hundreds and hundreds of acres of them, 
hke a huge tapestry laid out to our honor. 
Their fragrance was almost overpower- 
ing, and their color paled even the intense 
blue of the heavens. Below they ran out 
into tuft-grass between the stones, and 
still below that were two scattered groves 
of lodge-pole pines and junipers. 

We made our way with extra care 
through the lupins, for though they were 
beautiful, they masked the uncertainty of 
the footing. After awhile we came to 
the bunch grass, which was easier, and 
so through the thin mask of trees. 

Below us the hill dropped oif sheer in 
a tremendous plunge. We found after- 
ward that it was about fifteen hundred 
feet. To the left we knew the upper 
basin to be on about the same level as our- 

160 



THE SIDE HILL CAMP 

selves. From it leaped the Kaweah over 
the rim of the amphitheater on which we 
stood, vanished from sight, and reap- 
peared in slender filaments feeling their 
way through the meadow below. To the 
right our side hill seemed to merge in 
more precipitous mountains. Below the 
meadow the river appeared to take an- 
other plunge to another level. 

The problem, of course, was to find a 
way from the rim to the bottom of the 
amphitheater. We could see the opposite 
side, and part of one end. Dismount- 
ing, we examined the prospect carefully 
through a glass. Starting at the top we 
would follow out inch by inch the possi- 
bilities of descent. Always the most 
promising ledges ended in thin air or nar- 
rowed to the point of merging with the 
face of the cliffs. A single streak of 
green, almost perpendicular, and next the 
waterfall, offered the only possible way. 
161 



THE PASS 

It might be grassy, on soil, in which case 
we would be able to cut in it a zigzag 
trail, or it might consist of bushes, which 
might or might not mask an impasse. 
Our side of the basin was, of course, con- 
cealed. 

It was decided that I should explore on 
foot to the right and below. I resolved 
&st of all to continue as far as possible 
to the right on our present level. The 
way led first through another steep and 
scattered grove, past a shale slide, and so 
out to the ledge. 

The ledge was nothing more nor less 
than a break in the sheer granite sweep 
of a mountain some twenty-five hundred 
feet from summit to meadow. It was 
not a flat ledge, but rounded outward to 
the plunge. Where it joined the upper 
chfF a little soil had gathered, and on that 
soil had grown a tough, thick sod. This 
. strip of sod, whose surface was steep as a 
V<^- -.-. 162 



THE SIDE HILL CAMP 

roof, varied in width from one to several 
feet. I recognized the fact that while no 
horse could possibly walk on it, neverthe- 
less we might be able to cut enough of a 
notch in it to afford footing. A cursory- 
examination, however, soon turned me 
in another direction. At one point the 
ledge ceased for about twelve feet. Up 
to the beginning of that twelve feet the 
slender vein of sod ran unbroken; beyond 
that twelve feet it continued until it ap- 
peared to run out on shale. But between 
was nothing but hard, slippery granite, 
slanted away at an impossible angle to a 
final perpendicular drop of nearly a 
quarter of a mile. Unless one had a fly- 
ing machine ferry, thought I, he would 
hardly cross horses over that gulf. 

So I turned back. The face of the S 

mountain below where we had paused was 

utterly impassable. It, too, consisted of 

a series of inclined ledges, disconnected, 

163 



THE PASS 

and all pinching out to nothing. A man 
could get down afoot, by doing some 
dropping, some jumping, and a good deal 
of stout clinging. I did so, and shortly- 
found myself looking far up the cliif 
and wondering how I had ever accom- 
plished it. 

That was not my pressing business for 
the moment, however. Turning to the 
left I hurried across the immense piles of 
debris that sloped steeply away from the 
cliif, crossed the stream below the water- 
fall, and conmienced the ascent of the 
strip of green we had made out through 
our glasses. 

At first I was enough encouraged to 
stick up a few tentative monuments. 
Then I struck a bad place. It is easy to 
slur over bad places when you are afoot. 
They are easy enough for you. I wanted 
awfully to climb over hastily and forget 
it, but I knew retribution would follow 

164 



THE SIDE HILL CAMP 

later. So I canvassed all the possibilities 
as to that bad place, and ended by making 
a fresh start just below it. This time I 
got a trifle farther, had to reconsider 
again, and so made progress, a little at a 
time. 

The mountain teased me up that way 
for about six hundred feet. Then she 
carelessly tossed a few hundred tons of 
angular rocks across the way. The bushes 
concealed them; but they were there, and 
it did not take me more than ten minutes 
to determine the utter impracticability of 
that as a way down. So I threw away 
circumspection and climbed rapidly back 
to the rim of the basin. 

I found the party awaiting me eagerly. 

"Which way?" called Wes. 

"As near as I could tell," said I, "it is 

no way. There's a ledge over there to the 

west that peters out, but which I only 

looked at from a distance. It may look 

165 



THE PASS 

better when you get nearer. Everywhere 
else is straight up and down." 

"Well, let's tackle it." 

"It's too big a proposition for to-day," 
said I, "we'd better camp." 

"Where?" cried Billy, aghast. 

"Here," said I. 

"Why, it's right on a side hill!" she ob- 
jected. 

"It is," I agreed. "If you drop a ket- 
tle, it is going to roll off into space, and 
you'll never see it any more. The same 
to you, ma'am. But here's some bunch 
grass, and there's a bit of a stream in those 
big rocks yonder, and right by you is the 
only log of dry wood in this township." 

We had a lot of fun making camp on 
that side hill. Using the back of the axe 
as a sort of pick, we managed to dig out 
below a boulder a level large enough to 
contain our fire irons. "Upstairs" fifty 

feet was another boulder. Above this 

166 



THE SIDE HILL CAMP 

one Billy and I, with great labor, scraped 
a narrow trough in which to sleep. 
"Downstairs" Wes did the same. He 
contemplated the result somewhat dubi- 
ously. 

"In this country," said he, "a man has 
to picket himself out to sleep." 

Water we dipped up cup by cup into 
our folding canvas pail from a single 
place where it showed above the massive 
granite debris that filled its course. We 
could hear it singing up through the in- 
terstices of the cool, gray rocks. Wood 
we chopped from the single log. It was 
resinous, and burned quickly with a tre- 
mendous heat and much soot, but it suf- 
ficed for our simple cooking. Then we 
sat down and looked about us. L. 

The meadow below was already de- 
cently on toward night. In the lake a 
number of boulders seemed to swim plac- 
idly above their own reflections. Oppo- 
167 



THE PASS 

site was a long, black mountain of rock 
whose sides were too steep to retain snow, 
and which showed, therefore, in the more 
striking contrast to the white all around 
its base. We called it the frozen monster, 
because of its shape. It belonged evi- 
dently to the crocodile family, had a blunt 
head, short, sprawling legs, and a long, 
reptilian tail. The resemblance was per- 
fect, and required but little of the exer- 
cise of the imagination such likenesses 
usually demand. On closing our eyes at 
night, the last thing we saw was this sleep- 
ing saurian, benumbed by the perpetual 
cold in which he dwelt. We amused our- 
selves speculating as to his awakening. It 
ought to occasion quite a stir among the 
old liars who always kill their grizzlies 
with a knife, for he was over a mile long. 
Above the frozen monster towered the 
bleak and forbidding peaks of the Ka- 
weah Group, running abruptly down to 
168 



THE SIDE HILL CAMP 

where a bend in the canon concealed what 
must have been the beginning of the pine 
country. All about us, thus, were great 
peaks, rugged granite, snows. We 
looked at them from the middle point; 
they were co-equal with us, on our own 
plane of existence, like gigantic com- 
rades. In the next two days we acquired 
gradually the feeling that we were living 
out in the air, away from the solid earth 
that most people inhabit — as a man might 
feel who lived on a scaffold above a city. 
Clinging to the shoulder of the mountain 
we lost the assurance of level ground, but 
gained an inflation of spirit that for the 
moment measured itself by the standard 
of these titanic peaks. 

Again, we early fell under the illusion 
that somehow more sunshine, more day- 
Hght, was allotted to us than to less for- 
tunate mortals. Each morning we arose 
in the full sunrise, to look down on the 
169 



Y- 



THE PASS 

cafion still dim and gray with dawn. 
Each evening we cooked supper, in the 
shadow, it is true, but with sunshine all 
about us, while plainly the canon had 
set its affairs in order for the night. In 
time the notion took us that thus we, little 
atoms, were sharing some extra-human 
privilege with the calm giants all about 
us; that if we only could grow our souls 
to meet the rare opportunities here offered 
us we could enter into and understand 
the beautiful mysteries that are in the 
afterglows on the mountains. 

A number of more prosaic considera- 
tions were likewise forced upon us. For 
instance, it took a fearfully long time to 
boil things, and a deal of hard work to 
get about, and still more hard work to 
keep the cooking fire supplied with fuel. 
"^ After the sun dipped below the horizon, 
the snow-cold swooped like a hawk, and 

^ we soon found ourselves offered the choice 

— - . 170 



THE SIDE HILL CAMP 

of retirement at an unheard of hour or 
else prolonged rustling of firewood. Now 
it happened that some dwarf trees, not 
over three or four feet high, but thick 
and twisted and sturdy as gnomes, grew 
thereabout. We discovered them to be 
full of pitch, so we just set fire to one each 
evening. It burned gorgeously, with 
many colored flames, taking on strange 
and sinister shapes and likenesses as the 
coals glowed and blackened and fell. It 
must have puzzled the frozen monster — 
if he happened to uncover one sleepy eye 
— this single tiny star, descended from 
the heavens, to wink brave as a red jewel 
on the shoulder of the mountain. 

In the night it grew to be very cold, so 
that the mountains looked brittle, and the 
sky poHshed, and the stars snappy like 
electric sparks. But we had on all the 
clothes we owned, and our blankets were 
warm. Tuxana and Pepper crawled 
in 



THE PASS 

down to nestle at our feet. Far up above 
we could hear the bell. The horses, as was 
their custom, would eat all night. Then, 
guided by some remarkable instinct, they 
would roost accurately on the first spot 
to be reached by the sun. There, fur 
ruffled like velvet, they would wait pa- 
tiently the chance to warm up and snatch 
a little sleep. 





to. 



THE LEDGE 



THE LEDGE 

By shortly after sun-up the next morn- 
ing Wes and I were out. We carried 
with us our only implements — the axe and 
the short-handled shovel. The way we 
monumented led along the side hill, with 
some twisting to avoid bad outcrops and 
boulder stringers ; diagonally through the 
thin grove of lodgepole pines, and by a 
series of steep lacets down a coarse sand 
slide to the beginning of the ledge. ^-^ 

Here we proceeded cautiously, cling- 
ing to projections of the rocks, and to the 
twisted bushes growing marvelously in 
their interstices. The steep grassy strip ">^ 

was slippery, but testing its consistency 
with the back of the axe we found it solid 

175 ^^^^'u ^ i 






:/'■*■' 



L 



THE PASS 

and tough. The ten-foot precipice we 
climbed above, scrambling where even a 
goat could not have gone. We paid little 
attention to it for the moment. There 
would be plenty of time to worry over its 
difficulties when we had discovered the 
possibilities beyond. 

Them we found rather good. The 
ledge here became a strip of very steep 
side hill included between two precipices. 
That side hill was thick and tangled with 
stunted brush, serrated with outcropping 
ledges, unstable with loose and rolling 
stones, but some sort of a trail through it 
was merely an affair of time and hard 
work. One ten-foot slide made us shake 
our heads a little, for it ended with a 
right-angled turn. To continue straight 
ahead meant departure by the balloon 
route. Finally, we arrived at an al- 
most perpendicular watercourse emerg- 
ing from a "chimney" in the precipice 
176 



THE LEDGE 

above us. It contained but a trickle of 
very cold, and very grateful, water, but in 
the melting of the winter snows evidently 
accommodated a torrent. At any rate, its 
boulder-filled bottom was some four feet 
below our level and that of the trail route 
on the other side. 

As I have said, the bottom was boulder- 
filled, great big round fellows impossible 
to move. The banks were of cemented 
rubble and rock impossible to break down 
without powder. No horse could cross it 
as it was, and materials for a bridge 
lacked. 

"Never mind," said Wes, "well tackle 
it later." 

We crossed to the other side, scrambled 
around a bend, and found ourselves on 
a Uttle flat. Just beyond the flat we could 
see that another steep shale slide began. 
We walked to the edge and looked. In- 
stead of running ofl* to a jump, as did 
177 



THE PASS 

every other slide on this mountain, it 
reached quite down to the round meadow. 

"There's our way down," said Wes. "I 
don't know whether we can get through 
the canon; but anyway we'll have horse 
feed, and wood and water." 

We turned back, resolved now on pick- 
ing our way through more in detail. The 
watercourse we left for the time being. 

Picking a way is good fun. You must 
first scout ahead in general. Then you 
determine more carefully just where each 
hoof is to fall. For instance, it is a ques- 
tion of whether you are to go above or 
below a certain small ledge. You decide 
on going below, because thus you will 
dodge a little climb, and also a rather slip- 
pery looking rock slide. But on investi- 
gation you find, hidden by the bushes, a 
riven boulder. There is no way around it. 
^..{::^^\y^ So, then, retrace your steps to the place 
where you made your first choice. The 
178 




THE LEDGE 

upper route again offers you an alterna- 
tive. You select one; it turns out well; 
forks again. But you discover both these 
forks utterly impracticable. So back you 
must hike to the very beginning to dis- 
cover, if you can, perhaps a third and 
heretofore unconsidered chance. Then, 
if none are good, you must cast in review 
the features of all your little explorations 
in order to determine which best lends 
itself to expedients. This consumes time, 
but it is great fun. 

Wes and I took turns at it. While I 
picked a way, Wes followed my monu- 
ments, constructing trail. Then after a 
little we changed off. 

Making trail for the moment consisted 
quite simply in cutting brush and rolling 
rocks out of the way. The latter is hard 
on the hands. I started out with a pair 
of "asbestos" gloves, but wore holes in the 
fingers after half an hour. Then I dis- 
179 



THE PASS 

covered that the human skin is tougher, 
although by the end of the morning the 
ends of my fingers were wearing pretty 
thin. The round stones rolled off with a 
prodigious bounce and crash and smell of 
fire. When they reached the edge they 
seemed fairly to spring out into the air. 
After that we knew no more of them, not 
even by the sound of their hitting, al- 
though we listened intently. I suppose 
the overhang of the cliff threw the sound 
outward, and then, too, it was a long dis- 
tance to the bottom. The large flat slabs 
gave way with a grumbling, sHd and slith- 
ered sullenly to the edge, and plumped 
over in a dogged fashion. There were a 
great many of these, and the trouble was 
that though they were all solid enough in 
appearance, most would give way under 
pressure. 

"This trail is a good trail, provided the 
horses behave," remarked Wes, "but," he 
180 



THE LEDGE 

continued, "each animars got only one 
stumble coming to him." 

By noon we had worked our way back 
to the break in the ledge. Here we ate 
lunch. Then we attacked the grass strip 
on the other side. 

This was from a foot to a yard or so in 
width. We attempted to dig a right- 
angled notch in it, but found it too tough. 
Shortly the shovel twisted out of my 
hands, and as the exact hairline perpen- 
dicular was necessary to stay on earth at 
all, I had to watch it slide gently over the 
edge. We never heard it hit. After that 
we tried the back of the axe, but that did 
not work any better. Finally, we made 
up our reluctant minds that we would 
have to use the edge — and we had nothing 
but a file with which to sharpen it after- 
ward. So, then, we chopped out a way, 
probably six inches in width, hard and 
firm enough, and wide enough provided 
181 



THE PASS 

no one got panicky. This was slow work, 
and evening caught us just as we con- 
nected with the zigzag we had made that 
morning down the shale. 

Next day we attacked the two more 
difficult problems that remained. First, 
we cut a log ten inches through and about 
twelve feet long. To either end of this 
we attached our riatas. The tree had 
grown almost at the head of the shale slide. 
We rolled and dragged and checked and 
snubbed it down the slide until we came 
opposite the trail we had made along the 
ledge. This was no mean undertaking, 
for the weight was about as much as we 
could possibly handle even in the best of 
circumstances, and the circumstances were 
far from the best. At times it seemed 
that that log would get away in spite of 
us, taking our riatas with it. Then by 
tremendous ejff orts we would succeed in 
stopping it against a hidden ledge or a 



THE LEDGE 

solid boulder. The thing seemed instinct 
with mahcious life. When, finally, we 
would get it bedded down against some 
resting place, we would remove our hats 
and wipe the sweat from our brows and 
look about us with a certain astonishment 
that the landscape was still in place. We 
would eye that log a little malevolently, 
and we would be extremely reluctant to 
wake the resting devil into further move- 
ment. But as further movement was nec- 
essary, we always had to do it. 

And when, finally, we had dragged our 
huge captive to the notch on the ledge, 
its disposition abruptly changed. It 
became sullen. We had to urge it for- 
ward an inch or so at a time, by mighty 
heaves. Its front end gouged down into 
the soil as though trying to bury itself; 
it butted against rocks and comers; it 
hung back like a reluctant dog. And 
whenever it thought our attention was dis- 
183 



THE PASS 

tracted, it attempted suddenly to roll oflF 
sideways. 

We soon discovered that the best 
method was to apply the motive power 
from the hinder end and the directing 
force from the front riata. We took 
turns, change about, and in what seemed 
to me at the moment most undue course 
of time, we arrived at our break in the 
ledge. The passage had consumed three 
hours. We were pretty tired, for in addi- 
tion to having a heavy weight to drag, the 
possibilities of applying strength on such 
precarious footing were necessarily lim- 
ited. 

Here we rested. Then I climbed up 
the face of the mountain twenty feet to 
where the cliff jutted out. Around the 
projection I threw the loop of one of the 
riatas. 

Then I crossed above the break to the 
other side of it. Wes tossed me the end 
184 



THE LEDGE 

of the second riata. When I had it, he 
shoved the log off the ledge. There it 
hung straight down the granite, depend- 
ent from the line I had already made fast 
to the projection above. Next I took in 
on the second riata, whereupon, naturally, 
that end of the log rose to my own level, 
and the gap was bridged. 

There remained now to assure its solid- 
ity. I looped a great round boulder on 
my side. Then we tested every inch of 
hold of those two ropes, lest they slide or 
abrade. Wes crossed first over the new 
bridge, and so we went on to our second 
problem, well pleased with our solution of 
the first. 

The gully we decided we would have to 
fill. A certain number of loose boulders 
and stones lay ready to our hands, but the 
supply of these was soon used up. We 
then had to carry our materials from 
greater or lesser distances as we could 
185 



THE PASS 

find them. This was plain hard work, at 
which we sweated and toiled until we had 
moved a few tons of granite. Then we 
chinked our stone bridge with smaller 
splinters until we considered it safe. 

On the way home we paused at the log 
to throw sods in the crack between it and 
the granite apron. This was not for 
greater solidity, but merely to reassure 
our horses somewhat by making it look 
more like a trail. 

We arrived in camp after sundown 
dead weary, but rejoiced to find that Billy 
had cooked us a good supper. The even- 
ing was a short one, and almost before 
the frozen monster had blended with the 
night, we crawled between the blankets. 

Sun-up found Wes and me scrambling 
a thousand feet above camp, shortwinded, 
breakf astless and disgruntled. Of course, 
the horses had strayed — they always do 
when you have a particularly hard day be- 
186 



THE LEDGE 

fore you. Also they invariably stray up- 
hill. I remember once climbing four thou- 
sand feet after Dinkey. She was plodding 
calmly through granite shale, and had 
passed by good feed to get there. Why, 
I do not know. However, in this case we 
could not much blame them for seeking 
feed where they could, only it did seem a 
little unnecessary that they should be at 
the upper edge of that patch of lupins. 

So we took a parting look at the snow 
and granite where rose the Kaweah, and 
the frowning black steeps of the Kaweah 
Group opposite, and the frozen monster 
sprawled in his age-long sleep. First, we 
rode to the shale slide. Then we led to 
the beginning of the ledge. Then we tied 
up, and began the rather arduous task of 
leading our animals along it one by one. 

Of course. Bullet had the honor of 
precedence. The mere ledge was easy to 
him, for the footing was good enough, 
187 



THE PASS 

though limited in quantity. A misstep 
would have tragic consequences, but there 
existed no real excuse for a mountain 
pony's misstepping. At the log he hesi- 
tated a Uttle; but as I walked boldly 
out on it, he concluded it must be all 
right, and so followed gingerly. After 
a time we reached the rounded knoll, 
where trouble ended. I tied him to a bush 
and went back for another animal. By 
ten o'clock everybody, including Billy, 
had crossed in safety. We resumed the 
saddle, and turned sharp to the left for 
what now amounted to a thousand-foot 
descent. 

It was steep, and loose. Sometimes it 
seemed that the horses were going to 
stand on their heads. Often they slid for 
twenty feet, unable to do anything but 
keep their balance, a merry, bouncing lit- 
tle avalanche preceding them, their hoofs 
sinking deeper and deeper in the shale, 
188 



THE LEDGE 

until at last the very accumulation would 
bring them up. Then they would take 
another step. None but horses raised to 
the business could have done it. They 
straddled thin ledges, stepped tentatively, 
kept their wits about them. After a long 
time we found ourselves among big, 
rugged chff debris. We looked up to 
discover what in the absorption of the de- 
scent we had not realized — that we had 
reached the bottom. 

With one accord we turned in our sad- 
dles. The ledge showed as a slender fila- 
ment of green threading the gray of the 
mountain. 

With some pains we made way through 
the fringe of jagged rock, and so came to 
the meadow. It was nearly circular in 
shape, coniprised perhaps two hundred 
acres, and lay in a cup of granite. The 
cup was lipped at the lower end, but even 
there the rock rose considerably above the 
189 



THE PASS 

level of the grasses. We were surprised 
to note that the round lake, which from 
above seemed directly adjacent to the 
meadow, was nowhere to be seen. Evi- 
dently it lay beyond the low stone rim 
down the canon. 

We rode out through the rich grasses, 
belly high to the horses. No animal 
grazed there, except the deer. The 
stream divided below the plunge from 
above to meander in a dozen sod-banked 
creeks here and there through the mead- 
ow, only to reunite where the lip of the 
cup was riven. 

We rode to the top of the rock rim. 
The lake was indeed just beyond, but at 
least five hundred feet lower. We looked 
over a sheer precipice, which, nevertheless, 
had remained quite invisible from our side 
hill camp. This was serious. We hitched 
the horses in some lodgepole pines, and 
^ separated to explore. 

"" 190 



THE LEDGE 

I found that the precipice continued to 
the very hind foot of the frozen monster. 
At one point a deep gorge opened passage 
to the river. A smoke of mist ascended 
from it dense as steam; the black rocks 
dripped; jagged monsters appeared and 
disappeared beyond the veil. Obviously 
nothing but a parachute would avail here. 

Wes reported a steep side mountain, 
covered with brush, loose stones and rock 
slides, around which it might be possible 
to scramble. We proceeded to do so. 
The journey was rough. To our right 
and above stood monoliths of stone, sharp 
and hard against the very blue sky of the 
high altitudes. They watched us stum- 
bling and jumping and falling at their 
feet. After a great deal of work and a 
very long time we skirted that lake— five 
hundred feet above it — and found where 
the precipice had relented, and so made 
our way down to its level. 
191 



THE PASS 

Twice more we accomplished these long 
jumps from one terraced meadow to an- 
other. The sheer cliff walls rose higher 
and higher above us, shutting out the 
mountain peaks. By three o'clock it had 
become late afternoon. The horses were 
tired; so were we. We should have 
camped, but the strong desire to see the 
thing through grew on us. We were now 
in the bottom, where grew alders and wil- 
lows and cottonwoods. Occasionally we 
came across the tracks of the wild cattle 
of the mountains. 

And then the river dropped again over 
a fall; and we had to climb and climb and 
climb again until we had regained the 
sunlight. A broad, sloping ridge, grown 
thick with quaking asp, offered itself. 
We rode along it, dodging branches, 
blinded by leaves, unable to see underfoot. 
Abruptly we burst from them into a deep 
pine woods, soft and still. 

19^ 



THE LEDGE 

I was riding ahead. The woods 
stretched before me as far as I could see. 
I eased myself in my saddle. Somewhere 
ahead the route from the Giant Forest to 
Mineral King ran at right angles. Some 
time we would cross it. 

And then, without warning, there ap- 
peared, almost under my horse's hoofs, a 
deep, dusty brown furrow. I reined in, 
staring. It did not seem possible that the 
thing should have happened so quietly. 
Subconsciously I must have anticipated 
some pomp and blare of trumpets to her- 
ald so important an event. The appear- 
ance of this dusty brown furrow, winding 
down through the trees, represented so 
much labor of mind and body, so much 
uncertainty, so many discomforts, so 
many doubts and fears and hopes! And 
now it came into view as simply as a snow 
plant or a fallen pine cone. All we had 
to do was to turn to the left* By that act 
193 




THE PASS 

we stepped from the great shining land of 
adventure and high emprise to the every- 
day life of the many other travelers who 
had worn deep the furrow. For this was 
the Trail. 




194 



APPENDIX 

On re-reading the chapters of The Pass it has 
occurred to me that some might imagine that we 
consider the opening of Elizabeth Pass an extraor- 
dinary feat. This is not true. Anybody could 
have done it. I have attempted merely to show 
how such things are undertaken, and to tell of the 
joys and petty 'but real difficulties to be met with on 
such an expedition. I hope the reader will take 
this account in that spirit. 



195 



FIELD NOTES 

Regular trail into Roaring River. 

Ascend west fork of river; proceed by monu- 
mented and blazed miner's trail to cirque at end of 
caflon. 

When a short distance below the large falls, at a 
brown, smooth rock in creek bed, turn sharp to left- 
hand trail. 

Climb mountain by miner's trail to old mine camp. 

If snow is heavy above this point, work a way 
to large monument in gap. The east edge of snow 
is best. 

From gap follow monuments down first lateral red 
ridge to east. This ridge ends in a granite knob. 
The monuments lead at first on the west slope of 
the ridge, then down the backbone to within about 
two or three hundred yards of the granite knob. 
Turn down east slope of ridge to the watercourse. 
Follow west side of watercourse to a good crossing, 
then down shale to grove of lodgepole pines. Cross 
west through trees to blaze in second grove to west- 
ward above lake. Follow monuments to slide rock 
on ledge. Best way across is to lash a log, as we did. 
Follow monuments to knoll west of first watercourse. 
Turn sharp to left down lateral ridge for about one 
197 



FIELD NOTES 

hundred feet. Cross arroyo to west, and work down 
shale to round meadow. 

From meadow proceed through clump of lodge- 
pole pines to northwest. Keep well up on side hill, 
close under cliffs. Cross the rock apron in little 
caKon above second meadow. Work down shale 
ridge to west side of the jump off below second 
meadow. At foot of jump off pass small round 
pond-hole. Strike directly toward stream, and 
follow monumented trail. 



2 n-^ 



198 



